Where Angels Fear To Tread
by WarlordFil
Summary: Death changes things. When Commander Shepard tries to tell her old friend what he means to her, she finds out that her own thoughts about him have changed. Garrus/FemShep. ME 1 and 2 spoilers. T for innuendo and cussing. COMPLETE.  Sequel:  Closer to Home
1. Chapter 1: Fools Rush In

**Author's Note:**

This story (in two chapters) is my attempt to explain how Shepard went from "my buddy Garrus" in ME1 to "want to ease some tension?" in ME2.

Crammed full of spoilers for ME1 and ME2. Game universe and characters belong to BioWare.

I have deliberately avoided giving Shepard a first name or physical description. However, for story purposes, this Shepard is one of the classes that can use biotic powers, and leans towards Paragon, though with noticeable Renegade traits as well.

This story is based on a dream I had after starting to play ME2 and _before I knew that Garrus was actually a romance option in the game_.

**Where Angels Fear To Tread**

**Chapter the First: Fools Rush In **

Garrus Vakarian was not certain how, exactly, he'd expected to die, but given the choice it wouldn't have been here, holed up in this deserted building on Omega, the stinking armpit of the galaxy.

Another band of mercenaries was making a run across the bridge that was the only entranceway to his bolthole. Three shots, three kills. Over the last few days the slaughter had become automatic.

He was thinning their numbers, no doubt about that, but in the rare moments of quiet when the mercenaries were rallying, Garrus knew that he would not be able to hold out forever. He'd blocked the tunnels, but if the mercs had one brain in their collective heads, they'd be digging those tunnels out right now. When that happened, they would simply overwhelm him, and the last thing he'd be able to do was take as many as he could down with him. In the meantime, he kept himself busy during those rare pauses in battle, stuffing some more food into his mouth, checking his weapon, listening to the contraband comm scanner he had set up to follow the mercenaries' movements as best he could.

Anything to keep from wishing he were back on the Normandy with Shepard.

Anything to keep from dwelling on how badly he'd screwed up.

He'd reduced the criminal population on Omega. He had to be content with that. And he'd helped defeat Saren and Sovereign. His life hadn't been a waste.

But it shouldn't have had to end like this, alone in this rathole, just Garrus Vakarian against the world. He'd been trying to do something good. Why had it all fallen apart? When?

He had a terrible feeling that he'd never really recovered from the loss of…the loss of the Normandy.

Oh, he'd put himself back together again and tried to change his life for the better. He'd given up on C-Sec and all its frustrations, headed to Omega, and assembled a team just like Shepard had, fighting to guarding the innocent and weak from the cruel and strong who would prey upon them. For a while, he'd been proud of himself. Then his team got killed, and like a ship patched together with rivets and plates, he'd started coming apart piece by piece. One stupid mistake led to another and finally he'd wound up here, in this building, trapped in his last desperate stand, trying to put off his inevitable death.

His violent, lonely, inevitable death.

Garrus snapped out of his morbid thoughts, almost too late. One of the mercs had almost made it to the other side. He awoke just in time to put a bullet in the guy's brain.

But…too late. He heard footsteps on the stairs. The mercs were in the building, coming up behind him. By the time he took them out, more would surely be over the bridge. The endgame was upon him.

So be it, then.

He would go down fighting and make Shepard proud.

"Archangel?"

By the Spirits, he could hear her voice already Calling him home.

But he pushed the hallucination away, just long enough to take one more shot, one more kill.

The Turian known to Omega's residents only as Archangel turned to greet his killers. He rose slowly, leaning on his sniper rifle, his whole body aching as he turned his head. The hallucination was back.

_Destroying Angel._

_ …Shepard?_

He took off his helmet slowly, as though its visor was projecting the hallucination. It wasn't. He could still see her standing there before him.

*

Commander Shepard wasn't sure what she was going to find at the head of the stairs. She'd heard that Archangel was a turian, and she'd been told that his vigilante behaviour and uncompromising pursuit of justice had finally succeeded in uniting three of Omega's biggest mercenary gangs in the attempt to kill him, but she'd also seen the body count outside. Archangel was a badass, no two ways about it, and while she'd walked a narrow line during her time as a Spectre, she had a suspicion that this Archangel had changed his focus from protecting the innocent to inflicting retribution upon those he personally judged to be guilty.

She'd been bracing herself for a vigilante turian who might well squeeze off a few shots at her _after _she'd introduced herself, depending on whether he was smart enough to appreciate the rescue or fanatical enough to consider her an impediment to his mercenary-removal service.

What she hadn't expected was to see Garrus Vakarian under Archangel's helmet.

_Garrus_. Even Cerberus hadn't been able to track him down. Her other old friends were otherwise occupied, having moved on with their lives; Garrus had simply vanished, and she'd been more than worried. She'd felt sick. What could have happened to him?

And here he was.

She'd barely had time to think about it before the mercs attacked in force. At that point she was too busy trying to get herself, Garrus, Miranda and Mordin out of there alive.

Then the gunship arrived. Shepard shot it down, but before she did, it had left Garrus lying in an ever-spreading pool of blue blood.

Shepard hoped Miranda hadn't been watching when she knelt over and threw up.

She'd just found Garrus and now, might well be about to lose him again.

*

There was no true night on the Normandy, but since the crew was largely human, the ship was set to a twenty-four hour clock in accordance with human biorhythms. It was now 2100 Zulu hours on Earth, time for those not working the night shift to rest, but in the captain's cabin, sleep was not coming for Commander Shepard. She kept thinking about Garrus, who'd been cleared out of the medical bay and installed in his own private quarters with strict instructions to take it easy.

What the hell would she have done if she'd lost him? She hadn't even been able to watch Chakwas and Mordin working on him. And when they'd finally told her that he was going to make it, she dared once again to hope there would finally be some warmth in this gaping vacuum that was her new life.

She wanted to see him again. As soon as possible. Now.

Logically, she knew she ought to leave him be. Sleep would speed his healing from here on out. But her mind kept replaying their conversation from earlier that day.

_Nobody will give me a mirror._

_ Hell, Garrus, you were always ugly._

_ Some women find facial scars attractive. Mind you, most of those women are krogan. _

And they'd laughed, as they always did, sharing that same morbid sense of humour that so many soldiers had.

But now, late at night, Shepard lay awake in her bed and wondered if any part of Garrus had actually thought she'd meant it.

Shepard sat up and examined herself in the mirror, running her hand over her ravaged cheek. Cerberus had rebuilt most of her, but she had scars of her own remaining, and her body was laced through with cybernetics, inside where no one could see. She and Garrus really were a matched pair.

This new Normandy was bigger and roomier and more powerful, but it also felt hollow. Its crew were strangers, it masters was untrustworthy, and even Shepard herself was a facsimile of what she used to be. Having Garrus back was like putting the soul back into the Normandy. Something good from her old life still remained.

She remembered all too well what she'd felt while she'd waited to find out if Garrus survived his surgery. It was much the same as when she'd found out he was missing—the things she wished she'd said before she'd ended up spaced. Had he ever figured out what it had meant to her to have him watching her back? Had he ever guessed how much seeing him again had brightened this shadowy life she was now leading?

And they were about to go on another suicidal mission to save the galaxy. She might well find herself in that position again, where it would be too late to tell Garrus anything.

She had already died once. She'd woken up in Cerberus' care and found herself with so many regrets. What was the point of a second chance if it went unused?

She would not make the same mistakes a second time.

Shepard got up and left her cabin.

*

Garrus stared at the ceiling, watching the lights blur and refocus, blur and refocus. Whatever drugs Mordin had given him, they were powerful stuff. He was alert enough to recognize that his face hurt, but too out of it to care, even though a small part of his brain was warning him that he really ought to be more concerned.

There was a knock on the door. He had to listen to the person rap several times before he realized that he wasn't imagining the sound.

Mordin? Chakwas? He hadn't even sobered up from the last round of drugs they'd given him.

A familiar voice on the other side of the door.

"Garrus?"

Shepard.

A brief image—hallucination? Vision?—flickered through his mind. Shepard, with blazing red wings, holding a fiery sword. Archangel.

He'd gotten the name from her. It had originated in a conversation on the Normandy years ago. Ashley Williams wore a guardian angel pin, given to her by one of her sisters, on the collar of the shirt she wore beneath her battle suit. Garrus had noticed it one night during their down time, and he had asked her to explain it.

Turian culture had no concept of angels. The Turian spirits could inspire the living, but did not directly intercede in the affairs of mortals.

Shepard had told him that she had never cared for the popular human idea of guardian angels either, but there had been one image that had stuck in her mind, and she had told him:

_I was young, but already living on the streets. There was a place in the city where kids like me could go for food, shelter, a shower, a safe place to be. They ran it out of a church._

_ Pastor Cora ran the place. She was always trying to convince me to accept a foster home, but I'd heard too many bad stories from other street kids who'd escaped from theirs. That, and the lure of the gangs was just too strong at first. Cora was trying to give me people to look after me; the gangs were offering a chance for me to learn to look after myself. But by the time I turned seventeen, Pastor Cora had her way in the end. She was the one who helped me join the Alliance military._

_ There was a stained glass window in the church, off to one side, and on it there were no dying saviours or chubby cherubs. Instead there was a man, a man with red wings holding a flaming sword, alight with terrible beauty as the rising sun streamed through the glass._

_ I asked Pastor Cora who he was and she told me he was the Archangel Michael, the Warrior of God._

_ I never had much use for guardian angels—mine hadn't been doing much of a job at the time—but when I looked up at that image, I knew the kind of person I wanted to be. The kind who isn't afraid to stand up for what's right. The kind who'll put themselves between a danger and those who can't survive it without help. The kind who guards the innocent and punishes the guilty. The kind who takes it on themselves to do what must be done, even if it's hard. Especially if it's hard._

The image had stayed in Garrus' mind ever since.

That was who he wanted to be, too.

_Archangel__._

"Garrus? Can I come in?"

*

"Come on in."

Garrus still sounded a bit out of it. Shepard opened the door just in time to see Garrus finish struggling into a seated position, legs hanging over the side of the bed. He really did look a mess, and she felt suddenly guilty for letting her emotions lead her here when he needed his rest.

"If I'm disturbing you, I can come back another time," she said quietly.

"No. I'm not sleeping anyway." Garrus managed a grin that was familiar despite the ravaging on one side of his mouth. "Please, come in."

Shepard looked around for somewhere to sit, but the cabin was just about bare. The only furniture it had was an end table holding a glass of water and some pills in a jar. Garrus' sniper rifle lay against the wall, next to his armour, stacked in a pile. She studied him and realized that the robe he was wearing must have been borrowed from someone aboard—the sleeves were too short and he'd had to cut slits in the elbows to accommodate his spurs.

Garrus shifted over and glanced at the space beside him, then back at her.

Well, if he was asking…

It was hard to have a friendly conversation when you were towering over someone, and she didn't want to talk to him as a commander right now. She sat next to him on the bed.

"It's good to have you back," she said. Simple. True.

"It's good to be back."

For a moment they just looked at one another, and the silence was comfortable. Shepard realized how much she'd missed that. They were so in tune with one another, often they didn't need to say anything. There was a great temptation to simply enjoy it now. She already felt safer, even if she did have to work for Cerberus. Garrus would be watching her six. It would be all right. That kind of security was worth savouring; she'd had precious little of it up till now.

But she'd come here for a purpose and she was not going to be a coward now. She licked her lips. Why was this harder than charging into battle? Why was it more difficult than giving an order that could get someone killed?

"What I said earlier…about you being ugly?"

Garrus blinked.

"I didn't mean it. You know that, right?"

Vakarian inclined his head and continued to study her curiously.

"Maybe I'm part krogan"—god, the old habit of joking died hard—"but you still look fine to me. Besides, I'm not much to talk." She pointed at her own disfigurement.

The turian, for once, did not laugh.

"Maybe I'm part krogan too," he said softly, "but you look very good from where I'm sitting."

So he was happy to see her too. Already her life felt warmer. Fuller.

"I can't believe I missed two years," she whispered.

His gaze fell to the sheets. "It's not been easy without you."

She licked lips grown suddenly dry. "Are you angry?"

His gaze jerked to hers. His eyes were wide with shock. "Angry? Why would I be angry that I'm finally starting to feel all right again?"

There was something different about him. Shepard struggled to put her finger on it—it was more than just the scars. The old Garrus had, for all his military and C-Sec experience, seemed younger than she. Technically, he was, by two years, but their actual time in combat had been the same. Turians began military service at fifteen; humans were ineligible until they turned seventeen. As far as experience went, they were equals, but still Garrus had looked up to her and asked her for guidance. In return, she'd seen him as a junior—someone to mentor, someone to teach.

She'd been dead for two years and Garrus had changed.

This new Garrus Vakarian—the Archangel—was a harder, colder man. She'd seen the bodies of the mercenaries that proved it. Garrus had gone from a loyal subordinate and an impressive fighter to a leader in his own right. A commander—or a warlord. A killer.

She'd stopped a young, dumb kid on Omega from becoming one of those bodies. That kid hadn't been a hardened criminal; he'd just been naïve and foolish, the way she had been in her gang days. And yet that boy would have been destined for one of the Archangel's bullets. Where was the justice in that?

The Garrus she had known was passionate and driven, but never an extremist. What in the universe had possessed him to do what he'd done? Had the fight against Saren given him a desperation that had driven him to such drastic measures? Or…had she proved a poor role model in the end? Too much _do as I say, not as I do_?

And his choices hadn't made him happy. Shepard could tell. There was a weariness in his face that neither the drugs nor his wounds had put there. She had seen it in that very first glimpse of him on Omega.

It hurt, because under the bitterness she could see the old Garrus. If she'd let him down before, she would not do so again.

Shepard drew in breath. "So you're really okay with this. The Cerberus thing. The…back from the dead thing."

"About Cerberus: I trust you."

It was that simple.

He gave her a crooked grin. "And as for the back from the dead thing…that makes two of us."

"Hey now. You were only mostly dead. I was spaced, and when they put me back together, they used some extra parts."

She still _felt_ human, but…

"I wasn't a biotic before," she said quietly.

Garrus whistled. "No kidding. I got some cybernetics too, but nothing like that. I'm jealous." He studied her for a moment, then said, "Can you make my bed fly?"

She snorted laughter, and he did too, but then his grin became a grimace and his laughter died. Shepard sobered, watching him shake off his pain.

"Garrus, you're tired. You need to rest."

"I can't sleep," he muttered. "And…I don't…." He struggled for coherency. "Don't want you to…never mind."

Her throat clenched. "Would you like me to stay a while?"

"Not if you're busy, Commander," he replied, and then winced. "I'm sorry, Shepard, this just hurts too much. I think the pills are wearing off. I need to lie down."

Garrus lay down slowly, injured side up, his good cheek buried in his pillow. The way the bed was positioned in the room, it meant that his back was now to Shepard. "This isn't a very good way to have a conversation, is it?"

No, she didn't want to talk to Garrus' back.

She stood, circling to the foot of the bed. "Move over."

"Wha?"

He sounded dazed. She didn't wait for him to figure it out. Shepard moved on all fours up the other side of the bed and lay down on her side, facing him. "How's this?"

"Shepard…are you sure…"

"What? I'm on top of the covers, wearing all my clothes. Get your mind out of the gutter."

Garrus blinked. "…sure no one else needs you?" he finished.

Shepard flushed. "Nothing that can't wait." Now whose mind was in the gutter?

It was kind of weird, being this close to him, on a bed, no less. She could smell the medicinal tang that clung to both med bays and everyone who spent too much time in them. But she could also smell Garrus, just a little, and it wasn't unpleasant, though it didn't resemble a human being's musk. Turians smelled like…the closest thing she could think of to describe it was a mixture of freshly cut grass and pennies.

She'd maybe flirted with him a little on the Normandy. He'd played back. It was all part of the normal banter between friends. If she and Garrus took it a little farther than most people, it was because they were closer friends than most people. But when it came to actually _doing _anything…Shepard turned to people like Kaiden Alenko.

Kaiden. He'd been cute. He'd been kind. He'd been interested in her.

He'd been human.

Shepard would have run the other way if Garrus had shown the slightest inkling of acting on any of his flirting and she was sure he would have done the same. They were friends. Best friends. Nothing more, nothing less.

Oh, God, that had been another old joke between them, born of an offhand query from Garrus about the nature of the evening's meal, soon after he'd come aboard the original Normandy. Shepard had described their immanent supper as a plate full of all the shit you could eat, nothing more and nothing less, and something in the way she'd said it had made it uproariously hilarious to the both of them. The catchphrase had stuck due to its simple truth: every soldier always wanted something more, be it more ammo, more time, more money, more leave, and every soldier knew he or she might need to make do with even less at some point in the future.

But if _nothing more _meant she ought not to be lying here thinking perverted thoughts, _nothing less _meant she damned well ought to let Garrus know what he meant to her. Maybe that would be enough to cut through that Archangel persona and the weight of years and bring back, if not the old Garrus, at least a happy Garrus.

"I'm falling out of bed here," Garrus muttered, shifting his weight to get away from the lip of the mattress. Shifting it towards her.

"Go ahead," she reassured him. "We're friends, right?"

He grinned back at her. "Nothing more and nothing less." Yes, he remembered the joke too.

"Especially nothing less," she added quietly.

Garrus said nothing as he closed his eyes and settled into a comfortable position. He was right next to her, barely an inch away. And it was as though that hole in her life was filled by the simple proximity of her best friend.

She looked at Garrus, not quite sure how to express just how _much_ she was glad to see him again. Words were doing a miserable job of it. Maybe she should just shut her mouth and lie here and be grateful for the company. Maybe…

_Dead is a long time._

The self-control that had served her so well during all her military service was not helping her now. Nothing she thought of was ever going to sound right in her head. This was a matter for emotions, not logic, and her emotions, so long under tight rein, would be stifled as long as she tried to discipline them into coherent phrases.

She could take the time to plan out what she intended to say, but she was afraid all of a sudden, that one or the other of them would wind up dead again and this time there would be no third chance.

Unwilling to wait and unable to plot a proper response, Shepard took the only path left to her.

There were moments in battle when there was no time to think. When bullets were flying in your direction, waiting to puzzle out solutions left you dead. Those were the times you had to trust your impulses, allow your training to take over, permit your body to do what had to be done.

It was that sort of time now. Shepard dropped her control completely, let herself act on instinct.

The next thing she knew, she was kissing Garrus Vakarian.


	2. Chapter 2: Take My Hand

**Author's Note:**

Thanks to everyone who took the time to comment on this story—I've been amazed and encouraged by the response. There's going to be a third chapter, as I realized that there was more I wanted to explore and I could do it without too much re-treading of things we've already seen in the game.

As for a note about humans, turians, and mutual allergies: I had a wheat allergy for many years, and I still can't handle dairy, which has taught me the difference between "can't have" and "can, but it could hurt you if you do." I learned the fine art of balancing how badly I wanted that slice of bacon olive pizza against how good I was feeling—if I was already tired or sick or otherwise under the weather, the odds were against me—and then I made my decision, knowing that if I ate that thing, sometimes I'd be just fine, sometimes I'd be in a little pain, and sometimes I'd end up in a ball in the bathroom hoping to die. And, of course, the more slices I ate, the higher the odds that I was going to get a result I wouldn't enjoy. I gave up cake, donuts, burgers, sandwiches, pasta, cereal, burritos and pie, but be damned if I could stay away from bacon olive pizza…it was the one thing worth the possible outcome if the gamble didn't go my way. So Shepard kissing Garrus is not going to be consequence-free, but it's not necessarily the kiss of death either, for the reasons outlined above.

That being said, on to the kissing.

**Where Angels Fear To Tread**

**Chapter the Second: Take My Hand**

Shepard's first thought after abandoning her inhibitions was that kissing Garrus Vakarian was going to be a very big and very awkward mistake. She'd somehow managed to forget that turians didn't have _lips._

Her upper lip was currently pressed to a bony plate that apparently passed for Garrus' upper lip. It was slightly cool and very hard, kind of like kissing the china down in the mess, and it tastes vaguely of metal. This was going to be _terrible_, but she couldn't very well stop now or she was going to hurt Garrus' feelings. All told, she'd best wait until Garrus pulled away in disgust. In the meantime, having started on a course of action, there was really nothing to do but carry it through.

Her bottom lip brushed against Garrus'. That was considerably better. The bottom half of his mouth was more flexible, something like cartilage covered in soft hide. She tilted her head, angling to the side of his mouth that wasn't covered in fresh injuries. Oh, God, what had she been thinking? Any minute now Garrus was going to…

His mouth opened. Hers opened with it. The next thing she knew, something sweet and moist was lightly touching her tongue.

Shepard had never frozen in battle, but she froze now.

_Garrus was kissing her back._

Okay, so she was doing all the _pressure_ part, but he was moving his mouth in time with hers and the tongue thing had been entirely his doing.

Her old friend's arm wrapped around her back, pulling her closer, and she discovered to her shock that he was warm. His chest was firm under the robe, but the sensation was not unpleasant. It was not like hugging someone in armour. It was almost as though he was a very fit, very sculpted man under there, with just the slightest bit of give when she pressed herself against him. She just had to avoid thinking about the armour plates and ridges that didn't quite line up with a human being's bone and muscle structure.

_Oh, God._

Well, she'd wanted to be close to him, and here she was, outright shocked at how good it felt to be here.

Carefully, she moved her own tongue, waiting to see what might come of it.

A low, deep growling noise emanated from the vicinity of Garrus' chest. Shepard wasn't a xenobiologist but at this point she was ready to lay all her money on a bet that the sound meant _happy turian_.

So if he liked this as much as she did…

…what the hell.

*

When they finally parted for air, Garrus found himself panting and wondering what the hell had just happened.

Shepard had leaned in and…by the spirits, how long had it taken him to figure out what she was doing to him? That human thing, the way they showed affection. He'd seen humans kissing before—friends greeting friends, parents showing affection for children, and courtship between couples. Shepard was just trying to say she was happy to see him again in a way that was natural for her species.

Unfortunately, turians didn't kiss. Headbutts and licking were the most common displays of affection for his species. If he tried to touch his forehead to hers, it would ruin the kiss, so he'd opted for the licking, on the only place he could reach without moving his head.

They were well established in doing that before another interesting fact finally percolated through Garrus' brain.

In Garrus' experience observing humans, greeting kisses and friendly kisses and family-member kisses happened lip to cheek. The lip to lip kind seemed to be reserved for couples. The kind that also involved tongues meant that the couple involved really ought to get a damn room, as the human C-Sec members had been fond of saying.

So what in the hell had he just been doing with Shepard?

His mouth felt really strange now, too, all tingly and sort of thick. Mordin's drugs were really doing a number on him. Maybe he was completely wasted and dreaming all this.

Dream or not, Shepard was looking up at him, and if he wasn't completely misinterpreting her expression, she was waiting for some sort of reaction on his part.

"That happy to see me again?" he murmured. Damn it, why could he not resist the urge to joke with her? He seemed locked in to this way of thinking, of seeing her as a fellow soldier…

…hell, she was a fellow soldier, and that was why he liked her so much. They _understood _each other, and for someone who had never quite fit in—not with his family, not in the turian military, not with C-Sec, not in Omega, not anywhere really—having someone who _got it _was the most valuable thing of all. They saw eye-to-eye on so many things. He respected her; he looked up to her.

And in her absence he'd tried to _be _her and he'd failed so miserably.

"I'm sorry, Garrus." She seemed troubled.

He wasn't expecting the blade of panic that tore through him. "Are you really?" The words were out of his mouth before he could think better of them. What she had done was perhaps out of line, but he hadn't been much for rules lately. He didn't want her to have to regret showing her friendship for him. "Sorry, I mean?"

"That depends. How disgusted are you?"

"Not very." Maybe he _should be_, but he just…wasn't.

"I…" For once, words failed her.

"You missed me. You're happy to see me. You expressed it in a way that is common for your species."

Shepard's lips curved into a smile. "Yes. That's it."

He beamed. "It's good to be back." He nuzzled her, pressing his cheek against hers. It was so odd, not feeling her body under the points of his mandibles; in this position his mandibles were usually tickling a female turian's neck ruff. What he _was_ feeling right now was hair, a cascade of hair tickling his cheek and getting into his eyes.

Shepard laughed, but her voice had a quaver as she said, "Garrus, what's this now?"

He murmured in her ear, "This is how _my_ species would say…." When he spoke with his head turned towards her ear, his mandibles brushed her neck and that was delightful.

He touched his forehead to hers. "Hello."

He licked her cheek. "I missed you…"

He slipped his hand through her hair, stroking her behind the ear, which he hoped was analogous to the hide under a female turian's fringe. "…I'm very happy to see you."

Maybe a little _too _happy if he was playing with her fringe, but what the hell? Shepard's hand was rubbing his shoulder plate in a way that felt really nice. He arched his back, sighed. He let his hand come to rest on the back of her neck, with his talons still woven through her hair. His eyes closed.

He wasn't entirely sure that he wasn't lying dead in a pool of his own blood on the top floor of an abandoned building in Omega. If he was, then perhaps he should have been more religious, because he'd clearly gone to heaven. The same heaven as Shepard. And if he was fated to spend the rest of eternity on the Normandy with Shepard, then…

…well, then he mustn't have been that bad of a person.

He realized he'd been lying still for too long when Shepard squirmed and he reflexively retracted his hand.

"You seem tired, big guy. You want me to go and let you sleep?"

Garrus became aware that when their faces had parted, the rest of them hadn't. She was still cuddled up against him and he still had his arm over her back. She was warm, and soft in a way that was strange but not unappealing. He leaned forward, letting his forehead touch hers. She accepted it, and they stayed there, head to head.

No, he really didn't want her to go.

But…

_Duty. Remember duty, Garrus. Yours. Hers. _

"I suppose you have work to do."

She snorted. "For once, no. I'm supposed to be sleeping."

"And?"

"And I wasn't doing a very good job of it."

"So, you and me both then."

"Guess so." Shepard snickered, then sobered up. "I shouldn't be keeping you awake, though."

"I'm sure the drugs I'm on will kick in soon enough. Until then…I'd appreciate if…as long as you don't mind the possibility that I might drift off on you…"

"You're in a bed. That's the ideal place to drift off."

Garrus closed his eyes, nodded. Deliberately let his head come to rest not far from Shepard's. Deliberately pretended he didn't know how close he was getting to her. Deliberately let his mouth brush hers to see what she would do. Deliberately let his tongue touch her lip when she didn't pull away.

And they were kissing again.

_Shepard. By the Spirits. _

He breathed in the smell of her, the scent that on their first meeting had just been one more generic human smell, but over time had become layered with complexity and meaning. First he could pick her out of a crowd. Then he could scent her location on the battlefield, find her by her unique fragrance. Now that aroma had come to mean something more to him. It meant he had a friend in this cold, cruel galaxy. It meant he had someone who wanted him, trusted him, needed him. It meant he belonged _somewhere._

He belonged here.

When the kiss broke, he nipped her cheek, in a way that seemed very natural to him. Shepard didn't protest, so he nipped her again, harder, this time on the neck.

"Ow! Hey, careful there."

Garrus flushed with embarrassment. Shit, what had he been thinking?

Licking might be one thing—like kissing, it could mean different things depending on who was doing it to whom—but the nips were a much saucier thing, a sign of possessiveness. He had no damned business getting territorial with his commanding officer. She was the dominant one here, and she could do whatever she pleased with whomever she pleased, and it ought not to matter to him if she did because they were entirely different species. It _didn't_ matter to him.

He just wanted some assurance that she had a need for him.

But that wasn't his priority here. Human skin was much thinner and more delicate than turian hide.

_Idiot, did you hurt her?_

He'd never forgive himself if he had.

"I'm sorry!" he bleated and then cursed himself for sounding like a fool. "Are you all right?" he asked, humiliated.

"If you're going to do that, be gentler, okay? My hide's not as thick as yours." She rubbed at the spot.

"I'm sorry," he repeated helplessly.

"Next time, aim for the shoulder."

Garrus was still processing that statement when he suddenly found himself kissing her again.

*

Shepard had no idea what Mordin had given the turian, but her mouth was burning and her lips felt swollen. She could hardly even feel it when she kissed him any more, so instead, she tried doing that nipping thing that he seemed so fond of. She let her teeth nibble on his lower mandible. It made him growl like crazy, so she didn't argue with it.

Instead, she tried lightly biting him, then licking over the area she'd bitten. He began doing the same thing in return and _damn_, that felt nice.

Garrus was holding her. It felt comfortable, so different from the handful of admittedly brief relationships she'd allowed herself. For the most part, if she couldn't be both liked and respected, she preferred to be respected. Respect, in turn, often demanded personal distance. Sometimes, though, battle strain got overwhelming, and when that happened, it was almost inevitable that soldiers would end up in bed with one another, celebrating their continued survival in the most primal way possible. It was what she would have done with Kaiden, had he not gotten killed first.

Had she not given the orders that got him killed.

But being here with Garrus was nothing like that. She wasn't trying to be seductive, or change someone's opinion of her, or struggling to balance professional respect with personal desire. She had no one who needed impressing. Garrus was her friend, her closest friend, and here, she had complete and utter liberty to be _herself_. Even with the threat of the Collectors and Cerberus breathing down her neck, she felt secure, and that meant more to her than a romp in the sack. Here, she could finally relax.

Relaxation brought with it the knowledge that she was completely exhausted. How could she have been so tired without knowing it? She closed her eyes, savouring the protection and security that Garrus offered her. It seemed perfectly natural to rest her head on his chest, listen to his heart beating, feel his arms around her.

_Home…_

*

Garrus Vakarian watched his commander sleeping.

He guessed that not many people saw her like this. She looked vulnerable when she slept. Or perhaps it was just the way she was curled into him, her head resting on his shoulder, her lips curved in a slight smile. She was trusting him to keep her safe while she rested, and for the first time in a long time he felt unshakably proud of himself, for being worthy of that trust.

He kept vigil for a long time while she rested, but when the numbers on the clock finally turned over, he knew that he had a duty to perform.

By the Spirits, he didn't want to. He wished he could freeze time and keep her with him.

But he would prove to her that she had not made a mistake by staying with him.

*

"Shepard."

She blinked her eyes sleepily.

"Shepard, wake up."

"Wha…Garrus?" She blinked, peering up at him. "Where…?"  
"You came to visit me. You fell asleep in my quarters."

_In my bed. In my arms._

"Oh." She lay her head back down, not seemingly inclined to go anywhere.

And Spirits knew he didn't _want _her to go anywhere, but letting her stay wouldn't do her any favours. And…perhaps, when the drugs wore off, maybe then he'd feel the shock and horror he ought to be feeling about what he'd done, what they'd done. Better she not be here when that happened.

"Shepard, it's oh four hundred zulu."

"I'm not supposed to be on duty for another two hours." Her words were slurred, as though her mouth were numb.

Garrus cleared his throat. _He _was the one who was supposed to be all doped up here. He could _use _the drugs now to make this next bit easier to say.

"And I'd be happy to have you stay, but you might have to explain to the crew why you're leaving my quarters in the same clothing you wore here tonight. Or to Mordin about why you're still here with me. I'm due for more meds any time now."

Shepard sat bolt upright in bed. "Shit!"

Garrus nodded. "We might not have done anything, but it will certainly _look _like it."

Was that a lie? He honestly didn't know. No, they hadn't had sex, hadn't put hands under clothing or even groped through clothing, hadn't said a single thing about relationships other than affirming that they were the best of friends.

On the other hand, Garrus had honestly never spent a night nipping and licking any of his turian war buddies, at least not the ones he hadn't also been having sex with.

What the _hell_ had they shared?

Shepard, however, was nodding in acknowledgement of his statement. "Gods, imagine what Ashley and Wrex would have had to say…and they were our _friends_. These Cerberus jackals?" Shepard shook her head. "Shit, you're right, Garrus. Thank you." She smiled. "Always looking out for me."

"Any time."

He rolled onto his back and watched her go. His scars were aching; his mouth was burning. He needed some more painkillers, badly.

Something to make this confusion inside him go away.

*

Shepard had been afraid that speaking to Garrus was going to be uncomfortable and awkward, but the next time she saw him, Garrus was right back to being good ol' Vakarian, one of her most trusted officers and her absolute best friend. Not a thing was said about her night time visit and if he wasn't bringing it up, she sure as hell wasn't.

She'd run into Mordin on her way out of Garrus' room and was afraid he'd jump to some nasty conclusion, but the utter lack of rumours going around the ship made her certain that the salarian had presumed the truth—that she had simply gone to visit her long-time comrade—instead of jumping to some perverse assumption. Or, at the very least, if he had a dirty mind, he also had enough tact to keep his mouth shut.

In fact, she'd almost think she'd just dreamed the whole thing if it wasn't for the weird tingling on her lips and numbness in her tongue—probably a side effect of whatever medication Garrus had been on—and the giant

(_hickey)_

bruise on her neck where Garrus had nipped her. She was wearing a high-necked uniform shirt today in order to hide it from the crew, who would definitely start talking if they saw something like that.

No, about the only thing that had changed was Garrus' penchant to get a little withdrawn from time to time and obsessively recalibrate the main battery. And there were a lot of things that might be on his mind. Archangel. Cerberus. Facing down the Collectors.

It was foolish and self-centered to think it was all about her.

*

The main battery didn't need recalibration, but Garrus ran the algorithms anyway. Thinking about math kept his brain occupied with things other than Shepard's eyes looking up at him and Shepard's body in his arms and Shepard's lips against his mouth…and the fact that he'd been looking very closely at her neck these last few days and he could still see the bluish-purple remnants of the proof that he'd nipped her a little too hard.

The proof that he hadn't just been high on painkillers and hallucinated what had happened that first night he'd been aboard.

Garrus was feeling agitated and stressed out, and it was making him cranky. Thane was pissing him off, which Garrus attributed to an entirely healthy suspicion of known assassins. Jacob was pissing him off too, for reasons he didn't entirely understand, but they probably had to do with Cerberus…

…even though Miranda and Jack didn't seem to be annoying him quite so much. Even though Miranda also worked for Cerberus. Even though Jack was also a known criminal. Funny, that.

Kelly had also gotten on his bad side with her constant offers of "emotional support" and "comfort after a traumatic experience" and "would you like to see my traditional asari dancing outfit?" until Garrus had snapped and told her that he wasn't a human-loving monkey-fucker and to leave him the hell alone.

Kelly hadn't spoken to him after that.

Then one of the Cerberus crew had started mouthing off about aliens and Garrus had only just restrained himself from beating the crap out of the guy. And by "restrained himself" he meant "with the help of Miranda and Tali holding him back." He knew himself well enough to be aware that he was spoiling for a fight, and not just because his life as Archangel had gotten him a little bit addicted to violence.

It also wasn't because he was angry that he hadn't shot Sidonis. Shepard had talked him out of that, and she'd been right. He'd crossed a line somewhere on Omega, a line where he was forgetting how to value life, where he had started neglecting to temper justice with mercy. Looking back, he could see that it was better for Sidonis to face justice by due process. Looking back, he could see that he hadn't liked the person he'd become.

Now he had to start over again. Once again, he had to reinvent himself, to add "ex-vigilante" to "ex-C-Sec" and "ex-military." Once again, he'd tried something and it hadn't been right.

He'd hoped to fall back into his favourite past life as Shepard's right hand man, but something was getting in the way. That damned night in his quarters. It was filling his mind, infecting his thoughts. Shepard would _freak_ if she knew the kind of dream he'd had last night.

Garrus had never questioned his sexuality and he was not about to start now. He was a blue-blooded turian male and he liked turian females. This was a proven fact. He was not some kind of sick creep who was queer for humans. And he was sure as hell not going to fuck up his only friendship because he was having weird dreams.

Not that Tali wasn't his friend, too, but not in the same way that Shepard was and…

He didn't even want to think about this.

What was wrong with him? He'd gotten back everything he'd ever wanted and now he was wanting something else.

Whatever it was, he had to deal with this personal issue before it got in the way of everything he'd managed to recover.

Muttering to himself, he began the recalibration algorithm again.

*

The mission to help Samara terminate Morinth had personal repercussions for more people than just Samara herself.

Shepard had thought carefully before bringing Garrus along. The last thing she wanted was to court trouble from any merc who might recognize the infamous Archangel. On the other hand, no one on her team knew Omega like Garrus did, and that knowledge could prove helpful. In the end she'd taken him and hoped that his scars would change his appearance enough to disguise him from the locals.

As they walked around, she'd heard Garrus comment, with no small degree of bitterness, that Omega hadn't changed at all—that as far as he was concerned, all the work he'd done as Archangel hadn't made any difference whatsoever.

Shepard didn't believe that, but at the time she hadn't had opportunity to talk to him about it. She'd had to work quickly before Morinth once again slipped through Samara's net.

The whole time she was in Morinth's apartment, Shepard had been thinking of Garrus. And when Morinth had tried to seduce her—had tried to use her considerable powers to sway Shepard into her thrall—Shepard had found to her utter shock that the asari woman was relatively easy to refuse.

Shepard's mind had been permanently stuck on Garrus.

When Morinth whispered in her ear, it had been Garrus' voice she'd heard. When Morinth had taken her hand, she had felt Garrus next to her. When Morinth stoked her desire, she had wanted to hold it within her, to save it until she could get out of that apartment and collect the man she wanted, take him back to her cabin and…

Shepard had taken a very long and very cold shower after that mission, and if Garrus had noticed the way she'd been staring at him all the way back to the Normandy, he hadn't said anything.

Once Shepard had gotten her hormones under control, she'd gone to the mess for dinner and on the way, crossed paths with none other than Garrus himself.

_God_, he looked good.

Reining herself in, she'd managed to eat her meal, though there had been a very tense moment when he'd gotten some kind of sauce on his upper lip and hadn't realized it. Shepard had to fight the urge to lick it off with a three pronged assault: conduct unbecoming of a commander plus knowledge that turian food could make her sick plus not wanting to _creep out her very best friend_, combined, were enough to help her keep control.

What the hell was going on here?

She'd seen Jacob looking at her. Oh, his conduct was exemplary but his body language was clear. He thought she was attractive. Ordinarily, she'd be flattered. Jacob was a good-looking, highly competent, polite, moral, genuinely nice guy who was doing absolutely nothing for her because every time her hormones kicked in she started daydreaming about making out with Garrus Vakarian….

…_again_.

Shepard knew that there were plenty of humans who had the hots for aliens, particularly if the aliens were asari, but she herself had never been one of them. She considered it wrong to interfere in the private affairs of consenting sentient adults, and so she had let the xenophiles do their thing while she did hers. And her thing had always been human men.

Until now.

Shepard quashed her hormones as best she could and tried to think through this thing logically. What, exactly, had happened? She'd died. Lost her best friend. Found him again, almost lost him again. She'd realized life was short and there was a lot she'd left unsaid. A lot she'd regretted from the first time around.

She'd wanted Garrus to know what she thought about him…no, how she _felt _about him, and they'd ended up kissing and doing that turian nuzzling thing until she'd woken up in his arms. And no matter how wrong her brain told her that was, her heart had told her it was right.

She swallowed. She'd taken a few peeks at turian men on the Citadel, and to her relief, she hadn't found them particularly interesting at all. She'd looked at human men too, and some of them had looked very fine. She'd finally assured herself that she hadn't developed some weird alien fetish and then along came Garrus and all the other men of every species disappeared from her radar, because _none_ of them did for her what he did.

Realization hit her like a hammer.

Maybe looking at him got her going now, but that night in his quarters hadn't been about sex. And maybe that kind of implicit trust and understanding, that mutual reliance, that feeling of _belonging_ was a little bit beyond the ordinary scope of _friends_ or even _best friends_.

Maybe she was more than a little in love with Garrus Vakarian.

And if she was…

…oh shit…

…what the hell was she supposed to do about it?

*

"Have you got a minute?" Shepard said.

Garrus Vakarian looked up from the algorithm he had just re-checked for about the seventy-eighth time. Shepard was trying to be casual, but Garrus could read the tension in her words.

No wonder. He'd been kind of blowing her off lately.

He could pretend to be good ol' Garrus over meals, or in meetings—anywhere that was public—but when it was just him and her down here in the main battery, things got awkward. More accurately, his mind went places he wasn't entirely comfortable with it going. Places that started with his first night on board, when Shepard had come to keep him company as he recovered from her injuries. She'd tried to make him feel valued and welcome and special and they'd ended up…ended up…

He could tell himself that humans kissed for many reasons, including as a greeting, as an expression of friendship, and as a gesture of affection between family members, but he was lying to himself when he did. He'd gone on the extranet to confirm his suspicions and sure enough, if a human was kissing someone else with her mouth open and her tongue touching theirs, that was a pretty good sign that there was sexual chemistry happening.

And, of course, turians didn't kiss at all. So if he was kissing her back and liking it, what did that say about him?

He'd been puzzling over that question and waiting for Shepard to say something, which she hadn't. Maybe she was embarrassed too and hoping the entire situation would just go away. Garrus was fine with that, except that it had left him in this terrible position of wondering what was wrong with his head. He felt as though that gunship had taken a few brain cells with it, probably the ones having to do with _common sense_. He also knew he'd been more irritable than usual, which wasn't doing the reputation of his species any good among this all-human crew.

Grey areas. He was no good at them at all.

Well, if he looked at this situation in black and white, then he had two choices…go up to Shepard and give her a nip right now, see what happened, or pull himself together and fill the role she looked to him to fill. The first choice would cost him his only friend.

He took the second.

They talked about Sidonis, and the mission, and Garrus admitted to feeling keyed up, though he blamed all of it on the Collectors and the Reapers. He was just about feeling that things were finally back to normal when Shepard asked him about turian military procedure for dealing with stress. Garrus was well in the middle of telling her a rather racy story about his pre-mission encounter with a recon scout when his brain caught up to his mouth and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing.

He was sharing a war story, was what he was doing. It shouldn't matter that this story was a bit on the suggestive side—plenty of them were, and it's not as though he and the commander had been a couple, or would ever be, and he was just treating Shepard like any other fellow soldier…

He'd almost convinced himself by the time the story was told, enough so that when Shepard offered to help him with his tension, he really thought she meant sparring.

Her answer blasted right through that grey area he'd been struggling with.

Black and white. Two choices. Say yes, or say no.

He stalled for time, making another joke about scars, but…

_Oh, Spirits._

_ He wanted to._

Garrus felt his heart rate double and his adrenal glands dump into his bloodstream. He was so excited his hands were shaking—and so terrified, he felt like he might throw up. He hadn't felt like this since he was a rookie waiting for his first battle. No, scratch that. This was worse.

He turned on his heel, looking out the main doors of the battery to make sure there was no one in sight when he admitted the truth—to her, and to himself.

"Well, why the hell not?"

*

Shepard watched Garrus trying to justify his own answer and began to doubt whether or not she should have taken the opening he'd given her. She'd been wondering how the hell she was going to tell him she loved him and then he'd handed her such a perfect opportunity… Maybe it was the soldier in her. You see the target perfectly centered in your sights, and you pull the trigger. So she'd gone for it.

Had she made a mistake by shooting straight with him?

_No._ _Dead is a long time._

She still couldn't believe she'd outright told Garrus she wanted to sleep with him. No, scratch that, she'd already slept in his bed and done some kissing, too. Now she wanted to _make love_ with him..

She'd spent the last few days being a coward, hiding her emotions just like she had before the crash of the first Normandy. As though she'd learned nothing from being dead. She'd been angry with herself, angry and frustrated and lonely… So when Garrus started telling that saucy story, she saw her opening and she took it.

Now she was listening to Garrus' justification—and his concern. That was going to be the hard part, wasn't it? Trying to find a way to make it work. Shepard knew that turian/human couples existed, but she'd never cared to find out the intimate details of what they did together.

Knowing had suddenly become an imperative.

_If we can find a way to make it work…then yeah. Definitely._

Garrus was smiling.

Oh, God, he was interested in her, too. She wasn't just being perverted. It was the both of them. Thank God, they were in it together.

They could figure out anything when they were in it together.


	3. Chapter 3: Can't Help Falling

**Author's Note:** I'd like to thank Morgan of Salerone for her excellent editing job. As it turns out, this story still has somewhere interesting to go, and I'm hoping for at least one more chapter after this.

**Where Angels Fear To Tread**

**Chapter the Third: Can't Help Falling**

When the battery doors were open, Garrus was Officer Vakarian, calm and composed, delivering reports on the new upgrades to the Normandy. But when Shepard asked if he had a moment to talk, he took the time to close the doors before he dared open his mouth. There were things on his mind that he did not want these Cerberus scavengers to hear. And once his mouth opened, he was once again Shepard's junior, letting all his ethical questions and personal qualms pour unedited from his heart. He could not seem to help himself. This time, though, his moral quandaries were far more complex than debating the role of procedure in preventing police brutality versus creating red tape that restricted the pursuit of justice, or arguing as to whether or not he'd been justified in wanting to fire the Citadel's cannons at Dr. Saleon's ship. This time it was _personal_.

Truth be told, part of him feared that Shepard had been yanking his chain—that her comment about stress relief had been a joke that he'd taken too seriously. How could Shepard possibly want _him_?

He knew enough about humans to understand that she was striking by human standards. He'd seen the way Jacob looked at her. On the original Normandy, Garrus had watched Kaiden looking at her the same way. Kaiden had not seen him in the shadows, on stakeout, observing. Standing on guard for Shepard, though she had not known it.

He also knew enough to realize that both Jacob and Kaiden would be considered attractive by a female human's standards. Garrus, on the other hand, now looked like he'd gotten his face caught in a meat grinder by _anyone's_ standards, and he didn't have the kind of money or fame that could make appearance a secondary concern.

Everything about this match was laughable, ludicrous even. Even human he would not have deserved her, and he was the wrong species on top of it.

He would do what was right for her, no matter the cost. His honour demanded that he remind her of her better options, closer to home, and so he said the words.

It broke his heart to do it.

And in that moment he realized that what was between the two of them was more than friendship and far, far more than some perverse sexual attraction.

_I love her._

_Spirits help me._

She listened to him, and, when he was done, looked him in the eyes and said she wanted him still.

He said something about music, doing his best to be suave. He also said something about research, which he knew damn well wasn't suave at all, but once again his mouth had disengaged from his brain and he just needed to tell her that the reason for his delay wasn't lack of desire on his part, it was simple lack of knowledge. It was as though his gut instincts urged him to tell her everything. He realized, too late, that he'd voiced his fear that it would end up an awkward mess, and tried to cover with a joke.

Shepard placed her hand on his shoulder and offered him an out if he wasn't comfortable. Her words were warm, her eyes tender. He stared at her, incredulous that it would be _her _offering_ him _a chance to reconsider. _She _was the one with choices. He knew already, beyond a doubt, how deeply he was committed.

He admitted to her that she was his only friend left. He confessed that he didn't have a thing for humans, but somehow, that didn't matter where she was concerned. It took all his strength not to say the word _love_. It would be foolish to speak of _love_ when they had yet to figure out _sex_, and if one or the both of them would fall before this mission was through, then they had no time in the short days left to waste on things that might never come. For the moment, they were best friends who wanted one another, and that was enough.

She asked him when. He suggested they wait until just before the final jump through the Omega Four relay, partly because he didn't want this human-biased crew to hesitate behind her in battle (as they might if they discovered that their commander was intimately involved with an alien), partly because he'd go insane if he spent the time on course to the relay wondering whether they'd survive where everyone else had failed (and he knew Shepard would also appreciate the distraction), and partly to buy himself more time to research. The two of them were so different, and she was nothing like a turian woman... He was not going to ruin this miracle by bungling like a child who didn't know where babies came from.

His brain was focused on that thought, and his mouth promptly rattled off something embarrassing—something that made him sound like he had a weird fetish for his sniper rifle. _Dammit, Garrus!_ He could see the laughter in Shepard's eyes, but she held it in and offered to let him get back to work.

As if he had any chance of concentrating on firing algorithms _now_.

*

Shepard stared at herself in the mirror of her private bathroom, examining her reflection. Everyone else seemed to see a confident, competent commander, decisive and inspiring, cool under pressure. All she saw was a very confused woman with far too much responsibility for too many others' lives when she couldn't even figure out her own.

She'd tried to tell Garrus she loved him and instead ended up suggesting they have a roll in the sack together.

Well, he'd said yes. That had to be a good sign. Clearly the fact that they were different species wasn't so repulsive to him that he'd shot her down on general principle.

But _sex_ and _love_ were two different things. Shepard was well aware of that.

In her youth, in the gang, Shepard had watched as young women separated themselves into two groups—a small pack of fighters who fought beside the men, and a larger group who, unable to protect themselves, traded other services for the gang's protection. Some of them prostituted themselves to add money to the gang's coffers in exchange for protection. Some of them "dated" the gang members, and though a few of those relationships were genuine, from where Shepard stood, that route still meant depending on others for the rest of your life and trusting that they would not let you down. She'd already been let down enough. Her father had died. Her mother had vanished. She had seen where dependency lead.

So she had learned to fight.

It was only in the military that she had started to entertain the possibility of sex that did not mark you as a prostitute of some type, or love that did not make you critically weak. She had fallen for a fellow soldier, and she had found herself dumped a few months later. The betrayal had been devastating. The experience had taught her to enjoy sex and distrust love. From then on, she had taken lovers when her stress levels demanded release, but she had carefully guarded her heart.

She still wasn't sure how Garrus had broken past all her defences. Perhaps it was because he had not tried to break anything. He'd simply been there, watching her six, infinitely reliable, utterly trustworthy. He'd never demanded anything from her in exchange for always being there when she needed him.

And she'd never been so scared as she'd been a few minutes ago when she'd woken up in her bed with the thunderous realization that she _did _need him in a way she'd never wanted to need anybody.

_Love_ and _sex_. Two different things. That coin flipped both ways. Shepard struggled to keep her breathing steady.

If you could have sex with someone you didn't love, surely you could love someone you didn't sleep with. Shepard had thought that kind of love was reserved for parents and children, or comrades in arms, but she realized now she'd be wrong. Part of her would always love Garrus this way, no matter what happened between them.

If this sexual thing with her and Garrus didn't work out—if they couldn't figure out something mutually satisfactory—they'd still be a team, right? Or would he do what Liara and Wrex had already done, and walk a path that took him away from her? She would not force him to stay by her side if he needed a woman of his own species, or anything else that she could not give him She could never be that cruel to him.

If this was_ love_, then it hurt more than she could have ever imagined.

Her gaze fell back on her reflection and she wondered what Garrus saw when he looked at her.

A comrade in arms who was also attractive?

Or more?

Shepard let out a breath and tried to tell herself that she was getting ahead of herself. There really wasn't much point talking about long term relationships when they might not have a long term left. One or both of them could easily fall on this mission, and if the next few days were all they got to have together—or if, in the end, Garrus wanted a human only so long as a turian woman was unavailable—then wasn't it smart to make the best of what they'd been given?

_Don't think about it. Future's a long way away._

_ And dead is a long time._

Shepard got dressed for the day, but her thoughts would not settle, and finally she realized she had to deal with this issue the only way she knew how.

Head on.

*

_We can test your reach and my flexibility_, Commander Shepard had said.

So now Garrus was _here_, laying belly-down on his bed with his datapad propped up on his pillows, opening a bunch of attachments that Mordin had sent him and downloading an alarming quantity of turian/human porn off the extranet.

He felt weird and dirty to be doing it, but if Shepard was at all serious, he had better figure out how that kind of encounter would work between two very different species. Garrus didn't want a repeat of the nipping incident where he'd actually bruised her neck. He particularly didn't want their night to end with Shepard in anaphylactic shock, which Mordin had warned him was a very real possibility if they didn't take proper precautions.

Garrus still wondered what the hell he'd done to tip Mordin off. He was almost certain he hadn't been staring at Shepard _that_ obviously, and he'd noticed Shepard wearing a high-collared jacket to hide the evidence of the nipping incident from the rest of the crew. He'd stammered like an idiot when the salarian had come to find him in the main battery, but he'd managed to shut his mouth long enough to learn some useful information, mostly that he had to be very careful if he didn't want one or the both of them to come out of the encounter too messed up to fight. Mordin was a nosy bastard, but Garrus had to admit that the practical advice he'd gotten from the doc had been invaluable.

Looking at these diagrams, though, made him feel ashamed and utterly humiliated.

By the Spirits, he felt like he was eleven years old again, peeking into medical manuals and trying to translate dry clinical terms into something interesting. He remembered how it had been to be old enough to be curious about sex, but not old enough to have put any of the bits of knowledge he'd gleaned from his oldest brother and schoolyard rumours into practice, beyond two very awkward licking sessions with girls from the settlement down the road. The second of those girls had asked him if he'd like to do something that…well…he hadn't even known what the term _meant_, and even if he had, he wouldn't have known how to go about doing it. He'd run away from her instead.

Once his brother had told him what act her slang word had been describing, young Garrus had had enough of a clue to know that a certain degree of finesse was required if he was going to do something like _that_ when he grew up. He'd snuck into his father's office to watch some vids and try to figure out how one acquired finesse. It was much easier to imagine than to achieve in practice.

Garrus grumbled. He hadn't liked being an awkward eleven-year-old and he didn't like feeling like one now. This was _Commander Shepard_. She deserved a five-star lover, not a fumbling turian who didn't know where to put his…

His datapad pinged. Download completed.

Garrus perused a list of titles ranging from tasteless to alarming to so damn awful they were hilarious.

Oh, Spirits, he had to be _insane_.

*

Shepard slipped out of Mordin's lab feeling like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

The salarian had been way more perceptive than she'd given him credit for. He'd figured out exactly what had been starting to happen between herself and Garrus and he'd taken it upon himself to give her the necessary health information. She'd be grateful once she stopped feeling embarrassed.

She turned on her datapad and flicked through the information he'd sent her. Chafing. Teeth, marks left by. Claws, scratches from. Allergic reactions, potential _anaphylactic shock…_

Shepard's hand suddenly flew up to her mouth.

_That_ was why her mouth had felt all numb and swollen after kissing Garrus. It wasn't his painkillers at all. She'd had an _allergic reaction_ to him after spending who knew how long swapping spit.

Oh, _fuck_.

What the hell kind of future would this be? They'd have to use condoms all the time, no question about that, or she could end up sick or worse. Hell, they could make themselves sick just by _kissing_.

That was it…this was insane. Time to go put on a slutty outfit and fuck Jacob or Joker or hell, even Kelly, anything as long as it was human…

_Garrus._

Shepard's heart twisted in her chest. Suddenly it was hard to breathe.

She didn't want anyone but Garrus.

She didn't _love _anyone but Garrus.

She forced herself to inhale. She was Commander Shepard and she'd built her reputation on doing the impossible. She knew that turian/human couples existed, so clearly it wasn't unworkable, just…challenging. And nobody called Commander Shepard for an easy job.

She trudged back to her quarters, steeling herself to read the data she needed to know in order to make this work.

*

Garrus sighed. These damn vids were embarrassing and probably a waste of time.

The most important thing he'd learned from watching the current film—something entitled "Nubile Babes of the Nubian Expanse"—was that the camera seemed to pay undue attention to human mammary glands. Garrus wasn't entirely sure why he was supposed to care—turians didn't produce milk and didn't consume the milk of other species—but he'd seen enough humans, and asari for that matter, wearing clothing specifically designed to showcase those assets, that he was not entirely surprised. Well, he probably ought to compliment Shepard on hers, but he didn't find them particularly interesting and they made this video tedious.

The _rear_ views, on the other hand, were not bad at all… He imagined that they might be quite soft and comfortable when he…. This thought worried him all the more. He was a turian and he'd always been happy with turian women before now—hadn't he? What would his father say? What would the crew say? What was happening to him?

But every time he started feeling frightened and sick and nervous and confused and wanted to turn off the datapad to make the feelings go away, he thought of Shepard.

Those thoughts did it for him every time.

He paused the pad and tried to imagine Shepard in the place of one of the so-called actresses in the movie. The image just didn't work. Shepard would never prance around the ship in outrageously high heels and short skirts. Shepard didn't moan and sigh for everyone to hear. Shepard didn't wiggle her butt around and fluff her hair. By the Spirits, she was a soldier.

So he imagined that night he'd told her about instead—the gruelling nine-round sparring match, the tiebreaker in the lady's quarters—and, though he felt guilty about doing it, he imagined Shepard in the place of the recon scout he'd sparred with.

Oh, _Spirits_.

Yes, that was doing it for him _very nicely_. To hell with the datapad. Garrus flung it in the general direction of the door and curled over on his side, letting his thoughts pursue this line of thinking. Within seconds he was more hot and bothered than he'd been in longer than he could remember. He was so far beyond worrying about whether or not he was a closet pervert.

Shepard wanted this. He wanted it too. Consenting sentient adults, and the rest of the universe could stay the fuck out of their business.

"Vakarian!" came an obnoxious, gravelly, cackling voice.

Garrus sat bolt upright in his bed and looked towards the door.

Zaeed Massani was lounging against the side of the doorframe, looking down at Garrus' datapad with a big disgusting leer on his face.

"Never knew you were into _this_ sort of thing," he said with a knowing wink.

Garrus never wanted to curl up into a ball and die more than he did right at this moment.

He and Zaeed weren't exactly the best of friends, by which he meant that the Archangel side of his personality still privately thought that Massani could use a bullet in the head, just like all those other mercs on Omega, and Zaeed had guessed as much. Since Garrus knew that another gun on this mission was probably an asset, he'd given Massani his space and hoped that the merc would agree to live and let live. For the most part, Zaeed had. The problem was that Zaeed just couldn't resist taking the odd shot at him. And this shot was threatening to hit Garrus right in the heart.

"Can't you knock?" Garrus growled.

"God _damn_, Vakarian," Zaeed said as he surveyed the datapad. "It's always you cops that are the _really_ sick bastards, isn't it?"

"Shut up and give me that!" he snapped, which was the absolute worst thing to do, because now Massani's eye was sparkling with mischief.

_Nicely done, Vakarian. Now he knows how to push your buttons._

"Should I be warning the ladies on the crew about you?" Massani said, his voice half teasing, half threatening.

"Go ahead," Garrus grumbled sourly. Shepard wouldn't think he was a menace to the crew. And these Cerberus employees…well…some of them already didn't like him just for being a turian. What did he care, as long as they did their jobs and let him do his?

"Next time we're on the Citadel, maybe I should show you a place I know where the girls won't care that you aren't human…"

"I don't think so," Garrus said back, letting an edge creep into his voice. "I wouldn't want to bring any diseases back with me."

Zaeed scowled and Garrus hid a private grin. Surely Zaeed wasn't the source of the STD Mordin had detected spreading among the crew…the one that was carried by varren?

"I have an appointment with Mordin," Zaeed said stiffly. "See you later."

Garrus snorted laughter, but he still felt too uncomfortable and exposed to be sitting in his quarters with the evidence that would convict him. It was high time he got down to the main battery and started his daily work.

He wondered how long it would take him to clear his mind from thoughts of Shepard.

*****

Commander Shepard had her team firmly behind her now, but she could find no peace for herself.

She stood in the shower, hoping the warm water could wash away the cocktail of emotions that always preceded battle. This was it—it was time to confront the Collectors on their home turf. She had done all the advance preparations she could think of, and she had double-checked everything. If she kept at it, she'd simply triple-check and then start second-guessing herself. No. She had to let it be.

And she could not let her thoughts drift towards fear. She'd already died once, yet she was still afraid of dying again. Moreover, she was afraid of losing still more people under her command. Most of all, she feared what would happen if her mission failed. All intelligent life could pay the price. That was more worry than one person could handle.

She thought about Garrus, instead, and what they were about to do if she didn't lose her nerve.

Cerberus had replaced what she had lost on the original Normandy, including her clothing. Including the one set of impractical lingerie she owned. It disturbed her that Cerberus had somehow managed to find out what she'd hidden in the back of her underwear drawer under the sports bras and cotton panties.

She'd bought it on the Citadel when she'd still thought that she and Kaiden Alenko might end up _relieving tension_ together, back before Virmire had put an end to those plans. Shepard was able to admit to herself now that what she would have had with Kaiden would have been no more than what she'd had with other men before him. She was more disturbed by the loss of a good soldier and a good man than by their never-consummated tryst.

Nevertheless, she had still owned a lacy push-up bra and matching thong when the Normandy went down, and as a result, she owned them again now.

She debated whether or not to just go get her usual underwear. Lace really wasn't her thing.

_Turians probably don't know the difference anyway._

And it would be strange to wear for Garrus what she'd planned to wear for Kaiden. Forget this. Cotton would be fine….

_Cobalt blue._

It suddenly crossed Shepard's mind that the lingerie was cobalt blue, the same shade as Garrus' armour. Heat flushed over her cheeks as she wondered whether this was some cosmic coincidence or whether part of her subconscious, even way back then, had been thinking about the turian. Garrus, always watching over her when he thought she wasn't looking.

Shepard put the lingerie on, and then her regular work uniform overtop of it. She didn't want to look suspicious when she went down to Garrus' quarters in search of him.

God, she was nervous. This was worse than the first time she'd had sex and…

_First time. Shit._

Her body had been completely rebuilt. Lovely. Now she could add _that_ worry on top of worrying about her completely untested turian-specific technique and her concerns about having an allergic reaction, or giving him one. _Fuck, fuck, fuck_. Maybe she should just pull her blankets over her head and wait for Joker to call her with the ten-minutes-to-jump warning. Maybe that would be smarter.

_Dead is a long time._

No, the time for _smart_ had long since passed. If she was going to die tomorrow, she needed to do so without regrets.

Shepard steeled herself to find the courage to call Garrus as she walked out of the bathroom.

Just then, she heard knocking on her door.

*****

Garrus paced nervously in the confines of the elevator as it rose up to the captain's cabin at the top of the Normandy. The situation had an aura of unreality that was difficult to shake. In two hours' time, the Normandy would jump through the Omega Four relay, and they would either die or else find themselves in the battle of their lives. In the meantime…

The last time they'd been on the Citadel, when Shepard had been off helping Thane settle that business with his son, Garrus had taken the opportunity to go buy himself a decent set of civilian clothes and a bottle of wine. The wine wasn't as expensive as he would have liked, but vigilantes didn't exactly make a lot of money. At least he hadn't had to buy any for himself.

There were a few alcohol-induced holes in Garrus' memory after the original Normandy went down, but the really big one started after he'd handed in his resignation to C-Sec, told the Spectres he wouldn't be reattempting their training course, and hopped the first shuttle off the Citadel. He'd woken up on a filthy bench in a dark corner of a dirty bar on Omega with only the vaguest recollection of the weeks in between. Garrus had looked into the eyes of the other drunks around him and realized he stood on the edge of a razor.

He hadn't had a drink since. Instead he'd poured his energy into recruiting and building his squad, and he'd told himself he was making a difference. Now, though, he wondered if trading the bottle for a sniper rifle had simply been a matter of switching one addiction for another.

He didn't want to tell Shepard about that. About how he'd needed something, anything, to keep him going until she came back. There would be time enough to settle that if they survived the mission; if not, to bring it up now would simply waste what little they had left.

Garrus wasn't going to tell Shepard that what he felt for her could not be reasonably called _friendship _or even _best friends_ any longer. He didn't know if she wanted a long term partner. He didn't know if he could do the job, if she did. He didn't know what he would do if she didn't. But this was something he could think about if they both survived. Right now there were too many things he didn't know.

What he did know was that they would be together, tonight, and for now that was enough.

It crossed Garrus' mind that if the whole point of this encounter was to _ease tension_, then it had backfired spectacularly, because Garrus had never been so tense in his entire life. His hands were shaking, his knees were quivering and his stomach was a tight little knot. He couldn't even blame it all on the Collectors. Suicide mission in pursuit of technologically superior enemy with ragtag crew and rogue Commander aboard prototype ship? _Been there, done that_. They hadn't even had to _steal _the Normandy this time. Garrus knew how to fight, how to shoot, how to lead a team, and the certainty of that knowledge kept him cool under fire. He'd be doing the same thing on the other end of the relay that he'd done for years now. He had no idea how to accomplish what he wanted to do on the other side of Shepard's door.

By the Spirits, he should have watched the all of the damned vids, no matter how embarrassing they were. He was thinking specifically of the clinical ones that actually had practical information, as opposed to the ridiculous porn…

He considered taking the elevator back down to his room, turning on his laptop and trying to take in all the information he could in the shortest time possible, as though he were cramming for his C-Sec entrance exam all over again.

No.

They were only two hours away from the Omega-Four relay. Two hours was already not enough time for a night to remember; it was barely enough for a decent encounter at all. He did not have time to waste holed up in his room. Truth be told, he did not have time to pace this elevator, pondering whens or whys or ifs.

Garrus took only the few seconds that he took before every battle, the time he needed to wipe his mind of all distractions. He blotted out the relay, the Collectors, the Reapers. He eliminated his own fear and self-doubt as he erased his imagined scenarios of the thousand possible ways this encounter could go wrong. The future collapsed before him; the past folded behind him, leaving only a single point in time, shining like a star in the void.

For a moment, he felt as though he were back on Omega. He had his target in his sights, and one bullet left in his sniper rifle. One chance. One shot. One moment that would never come again.

Garrus Vakarian took aim, stepped off the elevator, and knocked on Shepard's door.


	4. Chapter 4: Can I Stay

**Author's Note: **Thanks to everyone who's supported this story so far. There's still more to tell, so it'll be a few chapters yet to go.  
Meanwhile, if you've got any interest in a darker and more dramatic tale starring Officer Vakarian, please check out "Man of Dust."

**Where Angels Fear To Tread**

**  
Chapter the Fourth: Can I Stay**

Garrus hated Shepard's alarm clock with a deep passion.

He'd been cuddled up to her, their foreheads touching, his hand tracing her hip, his whole body tense with excitement, feeling that for the first time in far too long things were finally going _right_...and then that damned clock had gone off and spoiled everything.

He hadn't left Omega as far behind as he'd thought. He'd reacted to the noise instinctively, leaping away from Shepard's side and onto his feet, instantly ready to fight.

Shepard groaned and slammed her fist down on the thing, silencing its mechanical scream. Then she looked up at him and gave him a lazy smile. "Still carrying some tension, I see."

"What was that about?" he asked, feeling equally jumpy and ashamed as he slunk back into her bed.

Shepard wrapped her hand around his and said quietly, "It means we have half an hour before we hit the Omega Four relay."

By the Spirits, where had the time gone? When he'd come to Shepard's quarters, they'd had two hours to spare. In the time since...well...Garrus had had better things to do than look at the clock. But now that he was aware of the time again, he also became suddenly and painfully aware of what he'd done in the hour and a half since his arrival, and, perhaps more importantly, what he _hadn't _done.

_One and a half hours earlier_

Garrus had started the evening with everything that had always worked on turian women: wine, music, and compliments. But Shepard had declined drinking the wine so close to mission time, and when he'd put on the music, he hadn't read any of the typical turian body language he'd expect from a female who was interested in him as a male. She'd watched him with an expression of wry amusement instead. Desperate, he had fished for a smooth line, only to realize that _your fringe is like a palisade_ wouldn't work at all on a human and none of the vids he'd happened to watch had given him any assistance in the_ being a gentleman _department. He'd been filled with a sudden panic, worse than ever before, that he was about to ruin the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Shepard, once again, stepped in and saved him. _Shut up. Stop worrying. _ Oh, and he'd tried, but before he could he had to confess to her, the way he always had.

_I want something to go right_, he'd said. _Just once._

And she did not push him away.

She leaned towards him instead, and then his forehead was meeting hers and their togetherness seemed perfectly natural. In that moment it did not matter that he was turian and she was human. Wine and music and smooth lines were rendered irrelevant by a communication happening on a much deeper level. Garrus had summoned all his courage and lifted his hand to touch her shoulder.

He had not touched her since that first night when she'd come to his cabin and invited herself into his bed. Well, perhaps their hands had brushed as he'd passed her datapads or ammunition, but not _touching_ touching, not the kind of touching that was done for its own sake and not as part of everyday business. It had crossed his mind as strange that she'd come to see him in the main battery so often and they'd talked about the practical implications of taking their relationship to another level, and all along, he hadn't touched her, though he'd let her touch him.

On the _arm_. That was some wild behaviour, all right, Garrus thought sarcastically. And what had he done when that contact had finally been made? He'd just stood there, talking a big game and not doing a damn thing to actually carry through on his words.

Garrus told himself that he hadn't trusted himself to touch her—that if he had, they'd end up holding their night to remember right there on the floor of the main battery—but he'd been lying to himself and he knew it. The truth was that he was afraid. Afraid he wouldn't know what to do. Afraid she'd think twice, think better of it, pull away from him. He was desperate to charm her so there would be no room in her head to doubt their decision and decide she might want a human being more.

And there was another lie, because Garrus knew full well that one or even several sexual encounters did not in themselves produce a lasting union. He was hiding from the truth and he was running out of time.

The truth was: he was nervous because he had never been with a human, and he knew that doing so—and liking it—would forever change his perception of himself, and others' perceptions of him. He was afraid because he was not used to being the subordinate partner. A large part of himself did not like the idea of losing control of the one aspect of himself that had always been his to command, no matter what his father or his superiors had to say. He was terrified because he might actually be _in love_ with her, and he was all too aware of what that meant to a turian, particularly when he didn't know if the feeling was mutual or if humans even had the same concept of love.

But he conquered those fears long enough to place his hand on her shoulder—a slow, tentative offering of himself. Shepard responded with a gentle touch at his waist. _Oh, Spirits_. In that place, if she were to stroke her fingers, she could tease him unmercifully. Or she could rub him in an intimate caress. Instead, her hand simply rested there in a way that he could not help but be aware of, and yet she held her fingers still and let him adjust to the sensation.

Each touch, a question. Looking into one another's eyes to read the answers there: _yes, good, more_. And _nice_, indicated by Shepard's eyelids closing and a low sigh. And _Oh!_ when her eyes widened and then she smiled at him, a little shy, a little roguish, and the slightest movement then would melt her expression straight to the look that meant _carry on, Officer Vakarian_....

She was nothing like a turian. There had been none of the customary dominance displays; it was already perfectly clear to him that she was in charge, that she was his commander, and she seemed to have no interest in ritually expressing the fact. When she touched him, it was never a demand. It was a _request_. She watched his reactions the same way he watched hers, and he knew that she was giving him a chance to object. It was a kind gesture, even if it was an empty one, and he had to admit that he found it very reassuring.

They explored one another, his hands moving over her work clothing and hers over his civilian outfit, until Shepard tugged at the collar of his shirt and looked up at him, her eyes shining with curiosity, her lips smiling invitingly.

"We'll end up on the floor," he murmured teasingly.

"Are you telling me to stop?" she asked, her voice husky, but her face had an expression of sudden concern.

It hit him in that moment that she'd really thought he _could_ tell her to stop. He realized, this late, that she must not have any concept of the fact that to a subordinate turian, the idea of telling his or her dominant partner to stop was unthinkable, a terrible social faux pas. A partner would need to be incredibly cruel and vicious to drive his or her mate to such a desperate measure, and even then, it was not uncommon for turians to grit their teeth and get it over with rather than accept the social stigma of a protest once dominance had been established between prospective mates. No, he'd made his choice the second he walked in here, and from this point on the choices were hers to make, whether she knew it or not.

For a brief moment he felt uncomfortable that she'd been treating him like a human, but how else would she react to him? It wasn't as though he wasn't struggling to translate everything she did into turian.

And so he shook his head wordlessly and then dared to push the boundary of his position as subordinate turian far enough to offer a suggestion to his prospective mate. "We could...uh...find somewhere more comfortable..." _Spirits_, he really _did_ like to break the rules, didn't he?

Garrus tried to move towards the bed, but the idea of leading his commander was just a step too far for him. He waited instead for her to take his hand and lead him to the bed, and he very willingly followed.

The removal of clothing was a sign that made him equal parts excited and apprehensive. He knew he wasn't going to see anything familiar under Shepard's work dress, which he could only hope wouldn't be a problem for his performance. He also hoped that Shepard wouldn't be put off by what she would see when _his_ outfit came off. He'd been on the verge of working himself up into a fine state of paralysis when Shepard had leaned forward and put her hands on his clothing, waiting for him to show her how it was removed.

_So natural_. All of a sudden the pieces had fallen back into place, into that easy and rhythmic exchange between them—your turn, my turn—that was elementary and instinctive. Before he knew it, he was down to the lower-body suit he wore under his clothing, and Shepard was wearing...

Turian women wore suits like his. Shepard's underclothing was remarkably small. He had no idea how it would be effective. Hell, he didn't _care_. The blue lace gave the illusion of patterns on her skin that were like remarkably detailed turian colony tattoos, except instead of on her face, they were on her...

He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry as dust. He was staring. He couldn't help it. His mandibles were flickering with excitement, utterly beyond his control. Some incoherent part of his mind was flashing an image of Shepard with Vakarian clan paint on her cheeks on and off in his brain. If there was any question in his mind about whether or not he was in love, there was his answer.

_Spirits_... He wondered if he'd ever be able to manage so much as _sex_ with any other woman again if this didn't work out. He wanted to panic. He couldn't. Shepard reached for him and all those very real concerns about what he'd done to himself, what he'd let happen, vanished like dust in the void.

Shepard made short work of his bodysuit and then they were touching again. The absolute _rightness _of it gave him a peace he'd never known before, even as his hands trembled with barely controlled desire. He even summoned enough courage to show her how to slip her fingers behind the lips of his plates to stroke the soft skin they covered.

He'd had no idea how the lacy underclothes were removed. The top—a "bra," it was called—utterly mystified him. Shepard giggled about males of all species failing to grasp the mysteries of bras. Garrus wasn't entirely sure he understood the joke, but he took comfort from the insinuation that a human man would fare no better against the pernicious garment.

And then…

Then, they lay side by side, gently exploring one another, sharing, learning. Every once in a while they would dip their heads to taste, to lick, but carefully, since they had to limit the risk of ingestion. The fact that they had to be so sparing drove Garrus nearly wild with desire every time Shepard's lips touched his skin. Her tongue was so soft and slick, not raspy like his own, and he craved her so badly…

He searched to find the places on her body that felt the best. He showed her where, and how, to touch him. With his hands alone, he found out what Shepard in the heights of pleasure looked like, smelled like. He cried out without shame when she did the same to him.

Their immediate needs sated—and secure in the knowledge that different species or not, they could at least successfully pleasure one another—they'd curled up together, forehead to forehead, and simply savoured the warmth of one another's bodies as their breathing and heartbeats slowed to more normal rhythms. Garrus closed his eyes, feeling Shepard's chest press against his plates when she inhaled. Her breath was a soft breeze against his hide. He draped his hand over the jut of her hip, felt her fingers splay across his shoulder blade, and was overwhelmed by the warm, glowing sensation inside him.

It was as though he were floating in some kind of alternate reality. Garrus couldn't remember ever feeling like this before, and he didn't want it to end. He wanted to stay here forever beside Shepard, because he felt...good. Secure. Happy.

By the Spirits, this must be what it meant to _belong _somewhere.

That vision of Shepard in face paint crashed through his mind again, and he struggled to drive it out. That kind of future was not guaranteed. It wasn't even up for discussion, yet. It was far too early for him to start thinking of Shepard that way...and it disturbed him, because he was having these thoughts about a human when he'd never given serious thought to marrying a turian. For him, thoughts of marriage had only come in the context of _avoiding_ his father's attempts to play matchmaker between his wayward son and the daughters of his father's associates. Now here he was, ready to tell a human that he'd...

_I'll be here if you need me._

Garrus felt his whole body stiffen as he realized what he'd done.

His mind had already wandered far beyond the duty-bound, formal-allegiance concept of turian marriage. He didn't need a wedding ceremony any more than Shepard had needed to go through the dominance rituals. He knew where he belonged; part of him had always known. It was why he'd fallen apart when Shepard died. It was why her reappearance had put him back together. He'd spoken the phrase over and over again without ever acknowledging the depths of the vow. _When you need me_. He had put no limits of time or space on those words.

He was truly in love with her, with all the possible consequences that entailed. His father's words echoed in his head: _there's nothing more pathetic than a turian in love_. He thought about General Septimus on the Citadel, and all those other turians he'd seen whose love had led them to ruin.

He might be in very serious trouble, but he could not feel that his promise to Shepard was a mistake.

"Garrus?" Shepard's voice interrupted his thoughts. "Something wrong?"

She must have felt him tense up. He smiled, and the smile came easily, because he was here with her now. "No," he said as he leaned over to nuzzle her. "In fact, nothing's been this _right _in a very long time."

Shepard had moved at the last second, and instead of nuzzling her, he wound up kissing her. He knew how to do it now, and he wasn't ashamed to say he liked it as her hands wrapped around his neck and held him close. But he let his mouth drift down her neck afterwards, just because it wouldn't be so great if they were going up against the Collectors with both their mouths too swollen to communicate clearly.

Part of him secretly wondered if full intercourse was really a smart idea. He'd brought condoms, of course, but if anything went wrong—well, there was no way they could fight the battle on the Collector base with Shepard sick, and no way they could opt out of the conflict once they were on the other side of the relay.

But he was still too much of a turian to object. If Shepard wanted that, Shepard would have it. And he was not afraid to admit that he was looking forward to it.

"Garrus."

He stopped lapping her collarbone and looked up at her inquisitively.

She smiled, cuddled even closer to him, tucked her arm under his and splayed her fingers across his shoulder blade. He could feel his body reacting to her proximity. He grinned roguishly, threw propriety to the winds and let his hand trace her waist, her hip. There was some kind of crazy thrill about being so forward with his commanding officer, something distinctly anti-turian that would have a dominant female slapping him across the face right now, but Shepard was just smiling her encouragement and it made him hotter than he could ever been in his entire life…

At that moment, Shepard's alarm clock began to blare.

*

Shepard had never been one of those officers who swore frequently, but she had a whole dictionary of curse words running through her mind as she slammed her hand down on the clock.

_Shit_.

Poor Garrus was freaking out as though the noise signalled an imminent attack. She tried to relax him, or perhaps she was trying to relax herself as she cracked a joke.

"Still carrying some tension, I see."

"What was that about?" he asked, twitching all over as he crept back into bed.

Shepard wrapped her hand around his and said quietly, "It means we have half an hour before we hit the Omega Four relay."

For all the differences in their species, she knew it was _dismay_ written across his face. What should she do?

She could still jump Garrus, tell him to just do her, but dammit, she wanted this moment to be special, not something they rushed through just to get it over with. Not a…how did Garrus put it? _Horrible awkward interspecies thing _between two people unfamiliar with one another's anatomy. And considering she'd never had sex in this body before, rushing into it now would certainly be more painful than pleasurable. No, she didn't regret that they'd chosen to go slowly, but she could only hope he felt the same way.

"Shepard?" Garrus was looking at her for direction, and that expression jolted her out of her inaction. She was Commander Shepard and someone was counting on her to act.

Unsurprisingly—and catastrophically—a Commander Shepard response came out of her mouth automatically. "We're sticky, and sweaty. We need to shower." All the while her brain was raging that no, that wasn't what she meant at all, and so she reached out and grabbed Garrus' hand. "Come with me?" She bit her lip. "Please?"

His hand tightened around hers. Yes, she'd scared him. Dammit, she didn't know what she was doing. What was wrong with her, saying something so brusque and callous?

_I can lead a handpicked team of soldiers, mercenaries, and criminals on a suicidal mission to save the galaxy, but I can't manage a normal relationship._

But Garrus was right there beside her as she led him across the room, into the bathroom, into the shower. He wrapped his hands around her waist as she turned on the water, sending a spray cascading over the both of them. The water falling over her face provided camouflage for the tears she finally allowed to slip from her eyes.

She was bungling this. She should have pursued him harder, sooner. She should have told him she loved him. Hell, she shouldn't have waited until two hours before what could be a suicide jump before continuing what she'd started that night in his bed. She knew he was nervous and she knew he felt out of his depth and she hadn't done much to accommodate for that…

…because she was out of her depth too and for once she didn't know how to fix the problem.

She'd had a second chance and she'd wasted it. There was no promise of a third.

Shepard turned to him, her body damp, and slid her arms around his chest. "I'm sorry," she whispered against the side of his neck. She felt a rising panic inside her. They were about to go on an impossible mission and instead of putting herself together, she was starting to come apart. She clung to him. "I'm so sorry, Garrus…"

"I'm not," he murmured back. His voice was raspy in her ear as his arms tightened around her. "I will never be sorry for anything we've ever shared."

"Garrus." She pressed her cheek against his chest. "I wanted to…I…"

His hand slid up under her chin, lifting her face so he could look her eye-to-eye. "Any time…all you have to do is ask. I said I would always be there when you needed me." A shiver rippled through him. "Do you know what that means?"

Shepard actually wasn't sure she understood all the nuances of his statement; it might have some arcane turian cultural meaning that escaped her. But right now, and most importantly, it meant she was okay. _They_ were okay. She didn't dare think about after the mission; she had to keep her mind focused to protect her people and get her job done. She did not allow herself to venture into that realm of hypotheticals where the possibility of her and Garrus in this cabin once more lived side-by-side with Garrus staring sightlessly up at the roof of the Collector base, blood cascading through his fingers, whispering _snipe one for me_ on his dying breath.

So she nodded, and wrapped her arms around his neck, and dared to smile at him. "Garrus—thank you for making love with me."

He tilted his head. "Is that what we did?"

Shepard bit her lip. "I…that didn't quite feel like blowing off steam," she said hesitantly.

He folded his arms around her and leaned in close. "No," he murmured. "It didn't."

They stood there for a moment, holding one another. "I don't know what this means," Shepard said helplessly. "We were supposed to…"

Garrus' mandibles tickled her neck. "I wouldn't have agreed to interspecies intercourse with just anyone."

Shepard snorted. "We didn't get that far, did we?" She pulled away and looked up at him, wondering how angry he was, or if he had guessed that she had cried.

"Then we have an extra incentive to come back from this alive." He offered her a tentative smile.

She sobbed openly then, and laughed, and flung her arms around him. He held her, supporting her, accepting her as she was. He still liked her. And she was going to do everything in her power to bring her whole team back.

She sent up a silent prayer to Pastor Cora's God to watch over them all—especially her Archangel.

Garrus looked back at her, his eyes so warm, and he whispered her name—her given name—as he dared one final kiss.

*

Garrus didn't bother to lock the door of his room behind him. Now in full armour, he sprinted through the Normandy's corridors, knowing damn well that everyone else was already assembled in the briefing room and that he was going to be conspicuously late.

_Real professional, Garrus. _He had this vague realization that he should feel guiltier about spending so much time in Shepard's shower. _Way to get the humans to respect you_. Cerberus humans, at that. He finally started to feel…if not guilt, at least anxiety. _And way to get them talking_.

He wondered if they were speciesist enough to buy an excuse about sending final letters to his family and losing track of time—because of course with no female turians on board he couldn't have been messing around—or if they'd immediately start making guesses about who he'd been spending time with. The bloody last thing Garrus wanted was Jacob giving him the skunk-eye, chiding him for not being as professional as Jacob himself, then sauntering closer to Shepard as if to insinuate that Shepard needed a human man and not a shot-up turian... The very thought made Garrus grit his teeth and run faster.

Even if Miranda and Jacob didn't start talking, the others certainly would. It would be a simple process of elimination. If he wasn't with Jack, or Tali, or Kasumi, or Samara, and if they didn't mistake him for gay or bi, then there was really only one other option and...gods, how would this affect Shepard when Cerberus found out that she hadn't put humans first when deciding who she wanted to take to bed?

He could only hope they'd manage to finish the mission before the team had time to do all the math and draw the obvious conclusion.

As Garrus slid into the elevator, he became aware of footsteps pounding along the corridor and a figure waving for him to hold the door. Garrus' eyes almost popped out of his head.

"Jacob?" Garrus said incredulously as the dark-skinned human entered the elevator, breathing heavily. "A little late, aren't you?"

Jacob pressed the "door close" command on the elevator control console and replied, "Could say the same for you."

Garrus took a deep breath. Jacob smelled like soap and detergent. His uniform was probably fresh. His hair was still damp from the shower he'd clearly just taken.

Jacob was always on time. Garrus could only guess that Jacob had been delayed by something—or someone—outside his control, and Garrus felt a morbid curiosity rising in him as he began eliminating the obvious answers: not Tali, who was head over heels for Kal'Reegar, probably not Samara...

Garrus realized that he was staring at Jacob at about the same time he recognized that Jacob was gaping at him.

"Tell you what," the human said. "You don't say anything, and I don't say anything."

Garrus felt a sudden relief as he nodded his head. "Agreed."

*


	5. Chapter 5: Meant To Be

**Author's Note: **I'd like to drop a nod to everyone at the "Garrus Love and Adoration" thread on the BioWare boards for inspiration, support, lols and general Garrus-ness.

I've also noticed that fanfiction net tends to make my section breaks disappear (I'm thinking gremlins, though I am not ruling out the possibility of wicked sorcery). I'm experimenting with different ways to make them stay where they belong. Sorry for any reading confusion, and let's see if this works…

**Where Angels Fear To Tread**

**Chapter the Fifth: Meant To Be**

Commander Shepard was utterly worn out. The joyousness she'd experienced at escaping the Collector base with all her crew alive quickly soured when she was forced to confront the Illusive Man. Yes, there had been a great satisfaction in blowing up the Collector Base and a dark pleasure in telling the Illusive Man to shove it. Yes, she'd been both surprised and gratified that Miranda had supported her—that despite Cerberus' machinations, her people were loyal to _her _and not some conniving mastermind. But when all was said and done, Shepard was left alone in her cabin, now on her own with her ship and crew, no operational support, and Reapers still out there somewhere.

The physical toll of her mission combined with the mental strain of her command responsibilities had her pushed to her limit, and yet she could not rest.

Where the hell was Garrus?

She'd showered, changed into her duty clothes, paced her cabin, cleaned her hamster's cage, fed her fish, paced some more… She was running out of ways to kill time. She thought he'd come up to her cabin, like he had before the Omega Four relay, but the hours kept ticking by with no sign of him. Goddamn it, what was his problem? Why would he never come to see her, or, hell, even _touch_ her, unless she started it?

Did he only go to bed with her because he felt he had to—like some kind of sick sense of duty?

Shepard would not let her brain go any farther down that road. She would not believe it of Garrus. She _couldn't._

Fortunately—or unfortunately—she found a new worry. He might still be in the med bay, where she'd sent him after the mission. What if he was too injured to come see her? Shepard remembered the sudden, horrible, sickening feeling she'd had when she'd seen him wince, clutch his stomach, tear the seeker bug away… She also recalled the indescribable relief when he'd straightened up again and given her a grin that as good as said_ I stop missiles with my face; one bug is nothing_!

She had to trust now that nothing so small could take Garrus away from her.

Another memory took hold on Shepard's mind, this time from the very end of their mission. They'd been running for the Normandy as the Collector base collapsed. Everyone else had been aboard when the ground began to crumble beneath her feet.

Shepard did not blame the others for leaping back from the Normandy's doorway. That was basic self-preservation, a hardwired instinct.

Except for Garrus. Somehow, his instinct had been to leap_ forward_, leaning dangerously far out the door in order to catch her hand.

A part of Shepard didn't want to admit that were it not for Garrus, she'd have fallen to her death in that void, and this time there would have been no one to recover her body and bring her back from the valley of the shadow again. Another part of her felt that if she had needed to be rescued by anyone, better it be the turian. And a small, achy part wondered where the hell he was right now, and whether or not she could—or should—go looking for him. God, she should never have left him in the med bay, Illusive Man or no Illusive Man.

To hell with it. Sitting around her cabin feeling lonely wasn't going to solve anything.

Shepard took one last quick look in the mirror and hesitated for a moment, lost, not certain whether she wanted to dig up her "Commander" persona in order to act as confident and competent and collected as usual, whether she dared to risk abandoning it in favour of the uncertain, lonely, exhausted woman in the mirror. A woman who'd just survived the impossible, saved her crew, brought all her teammates back alive, and proved that even death could not stop her—or a woman who'd never had a lasting relationship, who barely remembered her father, and who, without her father, hadn't been enough to make her mother change her mind about leaving home…and leaving her daughter behind. A woman who, at seven years old, had cried herself to sleep in an empty apartment, dark after the electric company had shut off the water and heat. Commander Shepard had been built around that person like a shell around a nut, protecting her, concealing her, burying her somewhere dark and silent where no one would ever see her to hurt her—and where she could never touch another.

There was a crack in that shell now, and a rogue turian had put it there.

Shepard dashed to her door and tugged it open before she could change her mind.

*………………..*

Garrus Vakarian sat in the corner of the Normandy's cargo hold, looking at the coffins stacked up against the walls.

They were empty.

Somehow—and even having been there, he could not say how they had done it—somehow Shepard had led her team through the Omega Relay, rescued the Normandy's crew, and brought everyone back alive.

He had told her there would be casualties. He had never been so happy to have been proven wrong. The worst injury, other than the post-traumatic stress disorder some of the Normandy's crew were bound to suffer, was his own.

Dr. Chakwas had stitched up his abdomen where one of the Collector seeker swarm bugs had sliced right through his armour, his bodysuit and his plate below. The insect creature had exhumed a bloody, messy furrow in his flesh, but the wound had not been deep enough to reach his organs. Garrus sighed and rubbed his cheek. One more scar to add to the collection.

He was tired. Exhausted, even. He was down here in the hold anyway, all by himself, hiding from sleep.

Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Shepard leaping for the Normandy, stretching her hand out for his—missing. Her eyes widening in realization as she began to tumble away from him, lost to the void again, following the Collector base in its plunge towards oblivion.

In his painkiller-fueled dreams he wasn't fast enough to save her. Or, sometimes, he just couldn't hold her wrist tightly enough, and she slipped through his grip and plummeted into the abyss. Three times in as many hours, he had woken up sick and aching and craving alcohol in a way he hadn't since the bad old days on Omega, all over something that hadn't even really happened.

And now he was awake and the feeling still haunted him.

Where was she? Why hadn't Shepard come to find him? He had his heads-up display programmed to flash the second she commed him, and she hadn't. Something was wrong. He didn't know what.

Maybe he really had disappointed her in those two hours before the jump. Maybe he'd misunderstood what she'd meant in the shower, what she'd described as _making love_. Hadn't he heard that love was different for humans? Human love was a fickle thing…

No. He would not believe this of Shepard. She might have come to see him when Mordin and Chakwas had been stitching him up, when he'd been lost in drugs and nightmares. Now she was…busy. She had to be.

She was busy elsewhere and he did not know what to do with himself. He ached inside, far deeper than the seeker wound had penetrated. It was as though Shepard completed him; without her, it felt as though something had been ripped from his guts. This had to be what his father had been attempting to warn him of. _Love will bring you to ruin_. It was too late for him now. Perhaps it had always been too late.

He'd never seen her coming. Shepard had hit him in the heart, and he had to find a way to live with his wounds.

He could only hope that if he just stayed awake long enough, he'd eventually collapse from exhaustion and sleep too deeply to dream.

*………………..*

"Garrus? Are you in here?" Shepard called into the dimly lit hold.

He'd already been out of the med bay by the time she arrived. He hadn't answered to knocks on the door of his room. She hadn't seen him in the mess, or the lounge, or on the bridge; hell, she'd even had Grunt check in the men's room for her. Nothing.

There was a smooth, graceful motion in the corner of her eye. Shepard turned her head in time to see Garrus climbing to his feet, looking both heartbreakingly handsome and perfectly businesslike, if tired. "Commander? Need me for something?" he asked in the crisp, professional tones of Gunnery Officer Vakarian, and it broke her heart, because it was as though those two precious hours in her quarters had never happened. Suddenly she missed the shy, awkward turian with his bottle of wine. God, had she screwed up when she'd asked him to wait?

Shepard bit her lip. "Not _need_ as much as _want_. Is that all right?"

Garrus flared his mandibles in what she'd come to recognize as a turian smile. "That's just fine," he said quietly, and stepped forward to meet her. "What do you _want_, then?"

"Where were you?" she blurted.

His mandibles flared. "Me? Waiting for you to comm me." The quaver was back in his voice. "What took so long? Is something wrong?"

She stared at him, he stared at her, and the expression on his face was so funny she had to smirk. He grinned. She snickered.

The next thing Shepard knew, they were leaning on one another and laughing, their arms loosely wrapped around one another.

"I think we're idiots," she gasped. She was laughing so hard that tears were running down her cheeks. "I was…I was up in my cabin…waiting for you."

When Shepard finally started to sober up, she realized that Garrus had his nose buried deep in her hair, nuzzling her right behind the ear. His mandible was stroking her neck and she could hear that quiet, deep growl that meant he was happy.

Shepard kissed his cheek before she pulled away enough to place a hand on each of his mandibles and guide his face down within her reach. "I want you to tell me if this is right," she said, and then touched her forehead to his. "Hello…" She licked his cheek. "I missed you…" Her hand slid up under his fringe, rubbing the velvet-soft hide she found there. "It's good to see you again."

Garrus folded his hands around her waist. "Please tell me you won't do that to some turian on the Citadel," he breathed into her ear. "Or anywhere else for that matter."

Shepard froze. "Why? What?"

Garrus sucked in a breath. "Your hands? Under the fringe? That's…well…that's more like…it's _verrry _good to see you again."

She murmured, "You mean if I do that, he'd take me home?"

"Yeah." His voice was hoarse.

"I'll keep that in mind," she replied.

_Target in sight, Shepard._

She hesitated. Garrus started to release his grip on her.

_Move it or lose it._

She dared to slip her other hand up the opposite side of his neck, play her fingertips across suede skin, rub tiny circles on the sensitive nodes she discovered.

"Shepard…" There was a pleading note in Garrus' voice. She wasn't sure if he was begging her to stop or to keep going.

"So? Isn't this the part where you take me home?" She held her fingers still to give the poor man a chance to think, and held her breath for the moment of reckoning.

The pause was not long, but still long enough for her to worry again that she was pushing him too far, too fast.

Then Garrus gave her a crooked smile. "Your cabin or mine?"

*………………..*

"Your cabin or mine?" The cheesy line was out of his mouth before he had a chance to think better of it.

When she closed her eyes and laid her cheek on his shoulder and said, "Yours," his mandibles quivered nervously.

_His_ cabin really wasn't that good an idea. He should have just assumed she meant her own and escorted her there. Of course, now that he'd opened his big mouth, it was too late to take it back. A turian didn't question his…

_(dominant mate)_

…commanding officer, after all.

So Garrus released her from his arms and accompanied her through the ship towards his quarters. He kept peeking glances over at her as they walked, in the hopes of reading some cues from her, but either she wasn't dropping any hints or else he just didn't understand human body language as well as he wanted to. He hadn't had much practice with human flirting behaviours.

He really wanted to _do_ something, to take her hand in his own, or to rest his talons on her hip, something to show they were…_together_, he thought, in the absence of any more concrete term. But she'd done nothing to initiate such contact and until she did, he could only assume she did not want it.

Maybe she just didn't want the crew to know. Maybe she had other men. Maybe…Spirits, this second-guessing game was going to drive him mad. Why in hell couldn't he be a good turian and just do as he was told and patiently wait for her to ask it of him?

_ I was up in my cabin waiting for you. _Did turian rules even apply here?

When he looked up, he was faced with his own cabin door in front of him. He turned back to Shepard and nervously scratched the back of his neck. "I, ah, I ought to warn you…being as we were going up against the Collectors and all…these last couple days, well…I didn't exactly make _cleaning my room _a priority."

Shepard looked at him and started to laugh.

Damn it! He was going to take his…his _partner_ into his dirty pigsty of a cabin and she thought it was _funny_?

Garrus put his hand on the door panel, unlocking it, and decided to just get it over with.

He opened his door and, yes, the cabin looked at least as bad as he remembered it. Piles of clothing overflowing a laundry receptacle, oils and cloths and other weapon-cleaning paraphernalia covering his desk, and, by all that was holy, a couple copies of Formax left over from his desperate inter-species research studies on the floor in the corner. Next to Shepard's immaculate cabin, his room looked like the filthy lair of an adolescent boy.

Mandibles fluttering with agitation, he stepped inside to let Shepard in.

She took the initiative to lock the door behind them. Garrus stood there helplessly, trying to force an apology out his choked-up throat.

She looked up at him and something in her expression changed. Her mockery fled. She looped her arms around his neck and murmured, "Hey, I'm not here for a room inspection."

Garrus finally found his voice. "Shepard," he whispered, his voice hoarse. He couldn't stop his hands from shaking as he curled them around her hips. "I want to give you what you deserve…"

"Garrus," she replied softly. "Garrus, I don't know what you think that is, but…." Shepard closed her eyes, winced as though in pain. "I just brought my whole crew back alive from a suicide mission, and all I want is to go to bed with my best friend. Is that so wrong of me?"

"If it is," he murmured, "then we'll end up in the same hell, eventually." He dared to nuzzle her hair again, breathing in the scent of...what was that? Fruit and flowers? He didn't know enough about Earth plants to name the fragrance, but it smelled both sweet and fresh.

She lay her head on his shoulder. "I just want to be sure this is what you want too."

The question was ridiculous, as far as he was concerned. He couldn't want anything more. She was the one with options—she was the one who might, in the end, seek something closer to home.

"I do," he said, but as she pulled away from him, he feared he had failed to convince her.

"I'm sorry. I have to ask." Shepard released him, hugged her arms over her chest instead. "Why didn't you come looking for me? You were in the hold, just sitting there."

Garrus tried to stop his mandibles from shaking. "You'd want that kind of, er, aggressive behaviour?" Scared, he took the easy way, the joke, because it was always easier if he could laugh it off. "Between that and the scars, I never knew you had a taste for bad boys, Commander…"

Shepard's brows drew together. He knew the expression meant _confused_. "Garrus, I'm serious."

His feeble grin slipped off his face entirely.

"I feel like I'm the one making all the overtures," she admitted. "I'm always the one pushing this issue. I'm getting…I'm getting tired of chasing you."

Insight sizzled like lightning, sudden and fierce, scorching as it tore through him. She was human. She didn't _want_ him to be a good turian and wait for orders. By the Spirits, she thought he didn't desire her. Could it possibly be all right if he.... She wanted...

"I just want to see you're interested," she whispered.

"Shepard," he said urgently. "Do me...do us both a favour. Say that again, but this time, make it an order." He closed his eyes and pushed his luck. "Tell me you want me...to show you what I feel for you."

Her confusion seemed to intensify, if he was reading her correctly. "I can't do that, Garrus. I can't ever force you to do this." He could smell her agitation.

"And I can't make a move unless you explicitly tell me," he growled, frustrated, realizing they both wanted the same thing and some weird human cultural taboo he didn't understand was getting in the way.

"What, you mean like_ I hereby give you permission to hit on me_?" She raised an eyebrow and offered him a grin, trying to turn it into a joke, though he could read the doubt in her eyes.

But his commander had spoken and that was...

"Good enough," Garrus rasped, as he stepped forward and put his hands on his commander's waist, resting the sides of his hands against her hip bones as he leaned down and touched his forehead to hers.

His heart was jackhammering a lightyear a minute in his chest. Being this forward with a dominant mate was...was...well, it terrified him and yet the rush of adrenaline in his veins was intoxicating, the thrill of something utterly forbidden, her scent in his nostrils, her body beneath his claws, his commander gasping as he ran his tongue over the soft skin of her throat and tasted her…

What if his family saw him now?

His father would have a heart attack right on the spot to see his son blatantly propositioning a senior officer, and a human at that….

…and damned if Garrus didn't want to broadcast this to the universe, and let everyone see that Garrus Vakarian belonged to Commander Shepard in every way conceivable.

Shepard moaned, and that little sound drove his desire right off the scale. Her hands curled over his shoulders, accepting him, by the Spirits, encouraging him. He obliged. Nothing existed for him but her, her hair on his face, his claws creeping under her shirt to the small of her back, her body pressed tight against his…

"Do you see now," he murmured in her ear, "just how interested I am?" He let his tongue play along the delicate curves of her earlobe.

Shepard gasped against his cheek, "This must be some turian thing I'm not getting..."

_That_ was a reality check—the reminder that she didn't know his culture any more than he knew hers. He'd never thought of the turian way as being exotic or unusual, and he'd have to try to see things from her point of view...

...later. Oh, Spirits, _later_. Right now she was kissing him, and in that moment he no longer cared about what species they were or the state of his room.

"Garrus," she murmured. "What would you say if I hit you with a surprise armour inspection?" She tugged on the collar of his hard suit.

He flared his mandibles in a turian grin. "I would say I should get this suit laid out on the floor for easier viewing...as quickly as possible."

And just like that, they were back to normal, or rather, the new normal...best friends with absolute trust in one another and an acknowledged attraction sizzling between them.

Garrus didn't get the chance to lay his armour out nicely at all. He'd only barely gotten out of the suit when Shepard noticed the bandages around his middle.

"I thought you said that was a scratch!"

"Next to getting hit in the face with a missile, yes, it is a scratch." He hesitated. "Unless it takes a serious injury to get you to come into my bed and kiss me. Then it's a horrible trauma...."

Shepard laughed. "Garrus, you're incorrigible...." She shoved him onto the bed. He grinned, closed his eyes and let himself fall.

Spread-eagled across his bed, Garrus opened his eyes and looked up at Shepard. "It's hardly fair, me here in nothing but my bodysuit pants and you with all those clothes on."

She slipped up onto his lap. "Are you telling me to take them off?" she teased.

"No, I'm asking you to instruct me in their removal…commander." He sat up and reached for the fasteners at her throat.

She raised an eyebrow. He yanked his hand back. "Too far?" he whispered.

By way of response, she took his wrist in her hand and set it back on the fastener of her top. Garrus needed no more encouragement to open the garment, slip it off her shoulders… He groaned when she rose up from his lap to kick her pants off, and sighed when she returned to her former position. Growling happily, he studied her smooth hide and..

Well, that was new. Shepard's current underthings seemed much more practical than the blue lace set. He also noticed that they covered considerably more than the outfits worn by the human girls in the pornos. Garrus wasn't sure whether to approve, or be disappointed.

He was tending towards _disappointed._

Shepard actually blushed. "The, er, the blue set's in the wash."

"And this is?" He raised an eyebrow ridge.

"This is the usual…sorry…I only have the one nice set."

"This looks…very serviceable, Commander. Comfortable."

"Yeah, this is what I usually wear." She looked sheepish. "I don't think I'd be able to stand walking around in a thong and underwire bra all day."

He tilted his head. "What are those for, then, if you don't like to wear them?"

Shepard buried her head in his cowl before she said, "They aren't meant to stay on that long."

Garrus thought about the women in the vids again and drew a logical conclusion. "That set is for…" When did his throat get so dry? "Attracting…mates?"

Shepard nodded, but didn't lift her head from his shoulder.

"Why do you just have the one?" he murmured as he combed her hair back from her ear. She was…she was _Commander Shepard_, for Spirits' sake. She could have any man she wanted, at least any man with half a brain to see what she had to offer… It didn't make sense for her not to take advantage, just a little. She was under so much stress…

"Never really needed more. Would you believe I suck at dating?"

Garrus blinked. "No."

She gave him a crooked smile, but her eyes shimmered in a way that made him…made him… He didn't have a word for the feeling, save that it was similar to playing rear-guard on the battlefield. Protecting her. _Defensive _was not quite right, but the best his mind could manage right now. "I was never very good at keeping boyfriends, Garrus."

"But you have had some mates." Hadn't she?

"Other soldiers, yeah. Nothing serious." She grinned, and he knew it was forced. "Tension relief, mostly."

"How very turian of you."

"Nothing that lasted." She wiped quickly at her eyes. He guessed she was afraid he would judge her and find her wanting, though he couldn't begin to imagine what more a man could ask for. "Do you think that's pathetic?"

"No more pathetic than I am." He offered her a smile. "Take that as you will."

"Really?"

"Really. _Vigilante_ isn't a great career to support a family on."

"You were a cop before that."

"I was a lousy cop."

"You weren't a lousy cop. You just aren't suited for political games. From the first moment I met you, you knew what mattered: taking down Saren and protecting Dr. Michel, no matter what the Council told you, no matter what the rule book said."

"Which takes us back to _vigilante_."

"You said to the Spectre."

"You're a _sanctioned_ vigilante," he teased. "It's different."

"Sanction this," she said, and licked his cheek. "How do I compliment your fringe?" she asked, stroking it. He started to shiver at the whisper of her hands along the long, sweeping spines.

"Er…" His hands clasped over her hips...he loved the way her hipbones jutted out, as if to make handles for his talons. "It's supposed to be long, and, ah, sharp, and…" He closed his eyes. "Martially intimidating."

"Ah. Well, consider me impressed…though…not intimidated." She wriggled on his lap, and when he felt her tongue on the soft hide at the back of his head, his heart almost stopped beating.

*………………..*

Garrus was a quick learner. He'd obviously been paying attention the last time she'd taken off a bra in his presence.

Something in the back of Shepard's brain told her that she ought to be feeling weird, if not completely creeped out, about being snuggled up in bed with an alien creature, both of them minus all their clothing now. She told the instinct to shut up and closed her eyes, breathing in the pennies-and-cut-grass fragrance of turian hide, marveling at the sense of security she felt lying next to Garrus.

If she had to go outside her species to find someone she could trust this much, so be it.

And somewhere along the line—she wasn't quite sure where—he'd really started to turn her on. Maybe it was the reverent way he touched her, or the care he took to find out what she liked, or the outright pride he took in spoiling her rotten. Maybe it was the fact that he could keep up with her, and no matter how far she pushed herself or how dangerous the situation, he was always there at her side. Or, hell, maybe she just dug the scars and the dark paladin who wore them so well.

Shepard wondered if he found her appropriately feminine, or if he saw her only as a commander from whom he would accept any order, no matter how intimate its nature. God, she hoped not. She ought to do something about that. "I'll get some more nice things," she promised him, her eyes shut. "Just for you."

"You don't need to, Shepard," he murmured into his ear. "You're beautiful as you are."

He'd never called her _beautiful_ before.

He continued, "Though in my own self-interest, if you'd like to show off for me, I won't object."

Thank God, it sounded like Garrus really did find her attractive. Her relief was abruptly swamped by the realization that she had no idea what he even liked. "Got any suggestions?"

"I liked the lace," he said. His mandibles tickled her neck.

"I could get some different colours."

"No," he blurted, then added quickly, "Get what you like—I'd like you in anything—but…"

"You like the blue?"

"I like the blue very, _very_ much." She pulled back and opened her eyes just in time to see the shy but extremely intrigued expression on his face.

Shepard was silent for a few moments, thinking that over. Blue. Like his armour. Like…

She ran her hands over the tattoos on his face, stroking his mandibles, rubbing his cheeks. She was missing something, but that was all right. The suicide mission was behind them now. There was no pressure. They had plenty of time to figure things out.

"Your turn to tell me if this is right," Garrus whispered. He lowered his head and let his tongue explore her skin.

Oh, he remembered the last time. He remembered _very well_.

And there would be no alarm clock this time.

*………………..*

Garrus couldn't stop his frame from shaking as he gently settled himself over Shepard.

This position seemed terribly perverse—him lying on top of her as though he'd just thrashed her in a fight and was now pinning her to the mat. To have his dominant mate in the position of a defeated combatant...it ought to be degrading, or insulting at best. He looked down at her, as though to say, "_really, Commander_?"

Shepard smiled up at him, shyly at first, and then her expression became radiant as she folded her arms around him. Her fingers splayed out over his shoulder blades. He could feel her belly warm against his, and her skin, so soft against his tender hide, exposed where he was missing plates: one from the damage inflicted by the seeker swarm, another from an old wound given to him by a batarian raider.

"You're trembling, Garrus."

He tried to allay her concerns—not to mention his own—by growling in her ear. "I love it when you make me nervous."

Her eyes sparkled; then she closed them and sighed happily. Her pleasure was bewildering. He'd expect that kind of welcome from a subordinate mate; in a commander, it was strange, and suggested a submission fetish that just didn't make sense with what he knew of her...

_Stop thinking like she's a turian._

She had requested this situation, for whatever reason, and that was good enough. Her pleasure was obvious, and if Shepard liked it, who was he to complain? It was not as though it was unpleasant. He ought to be grateful that he at least had an idea what he was doing.

Garrus remembered exactly how that story he'd told Shepard had ended. He and the recon scout had still been tussling as they'd torn each other's armour off in the privacy of her quarters. He'd often wondered if they would have ended up actually damaging each other were it not for the fact that she'd stumbled on a discarded piece of armour and he'd pressed his advantage, pouncing, pinning her just like this...only then, of course, he'd gone for the traditional dominance gesture, holding her throat in his teeth. The hold wouldn't cause damage unless she resisted, and of course, being a good turian, she didn't. Dominance established, they...

Shepard slipped her hands under his fringe, hauled his head down to hers, and kissed him.

He suddenly forgot how his old story ended, and why should he bother trying to remember? Garrus opened his mouth, touched his tongue to hers. He had the bewildering notion that pinning her or not, he wasn't the one in control here...but that was as it should be. He felt a sense of comfort that he didn't usually associate with first-time experiences. It was as though he were rediscovering something a part of him had known all along.

When the kiss broke, Shepard looked up at him and suddenly frowned. "Garrus, you've _got_ to get rid of this."

She was fast as a gunshot, and the next thing he knew his visor was soaring across the room. He blinked, startled, squinting the eye that was usually shielded by his heads-up display. The device was practically part of him; he usually fell asleep with it on. More than a little stunned, he stared down at Shepard and met her gaze, directly now that there was nothing between them. "Better," Shepard said with a smile. She seemed captivated by his eyes.

Her scent swam in his nostrils, like the faint scent of berries on a fresh spring breeze, vibrant, vital, _alive_. She gripped his hips with her thighs and _oh Spirits, what that felt like_... He could feel himself, ready, and her, receptive, and...

"Will you accept me as your mate?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

Her hand stroked under his fringe. "What does that mean?"

He closed his eyes, swallowed. He was trembling with anticipation. His mandibles flickered as he struggled to hold onto the ability to speak just a little longer. "It means...do you want to?"

"Yes," Shepard said, and he had just enough presence of mind left to notice that she did not close her eyes in surrender. She looked at him and into him, seeing him and accepting him, and he looked back as they united, unafraid even though he knew beyond any question that his soul was no longer his own.


	6. Chapter 6:  Surely To The Sea

**Where Angels Fear To Tread**

**Chapter the Sixth: Surely To The Sea**

Shepard lay curled on her side, alone in Garrus' bed. She faced the wall; her gaze fell upon a bottle of Palavan ale, the only thing on the shelf over Garrus' bed. She stared at the softly glowing liquid as she tried to come to terms with what had just happened.

Yes, there'd been some awkwardness at first, mostly centered around the fact that humans and turians seemed to have very different ideas of what constituted basic "vanilla" sex. Shepard usually liked to be on top, but she didn't think that position would be all that comfortable for her first time in this body. She'd shyly asked Garrus if he'd be willing to do something more traditional, and he'd agreed.

Then she'd found out that "traditional" for a turian apparently meant the female on her knees, draped over the bed, with her chin tucked down against her collarbone and her rump in the air.

No way in hell was _that _happening.

Shepard hadn't learned to fight as a teenager, hadn't resisted the easy path of the older male gangsters' protection in exchange for sex, in order to let a man dominate her now.

So she'd told Garrus that she had the human position in mind. And telling him what the missionary position involved had pretty much made his eyes pop out of his head. Shepard was still trying to wrap her brain around what was so terribly kinky about that from a turian point of view. She'd shocked him, no doubt, but he still hadn't said no.

And then…

She recalled looking up into crystal blue eyes made strangely vulnerable by the absence of the previously ever-present visor. She knew she had been taken aback by his tenderness, how reverently he treated her, how his frame had trembled as he fought to control himself long enough for both of them to savour their time together. For God's sake, they'd _kissed _while they did it, and Shepard couldn't quite reconcile the innocent sweetness of that gesture with the sharp need and fiery pleasure that had burned throughout her body. And she remembered that whatever unfortunate comments he might have made about savouring shots before popping heat sinks, Gunnery Officer Vakarian could _reload _with a speed no human could match.

She'd been really sore the second go-round, but she hadn't been able to stop him, or rather, hadn't been able to want to stop him. She was pretty sure she'd begged him to continue, in fact, and if he ever brought _that_ up in public, she'd be outright sickened with humiliation. Doubly so if he mentioned the tears that had run down her cheeks during it.

But afterwards, Garrus had bolted out of bed and made a run for the sink in the corner. Shepard wasn't sure what he was doing over there, but she heard water running and drawers slamming. She didn't have the courage to roll over and look at him. He'd left with only a mumbled "gotta clean up" and then he'd just been…gone.

She felt...she _hated_ it. She felt cold and alone and...and defenceless, and she was scared. Unlike her usual relationships—okay, romantic encounters—she could not just put herself back together and walk away. She had to trust him to keep his mouth shut about watching her fall apart and, God, somehow they'd never even gotten around to talking about what this relationship was supposed to be. It could fall anywhere on the scale between one-night stand and some bizarre alien marriage, and either of those extremes scared the shit out of her.

Something had happened—she didn't know if it had gone very wrong or very right, but she was in real trouble. Somewhere along the line she'd lost control. She loved him and she'd let him…she'd trusted him with her heart, not just her body.

And she already knew where that road led. Her father's grave in the autumn rain and _you need to be a big girl now. _Mommy leaving the apartment one morning and never coming back. Shepard squeezed her eyes closed, lost in a swirl of memory and nightmare.

Something bunted her cheek. Garrus. She cracked open her eyelids.

He didn't say anything, only nudged her more insistently. She grunted. He retreated, but moments later she felt his raspy tongue over the back of her neck. How did something so weird feel so damn good—sexy and tender at the same time?

Shepard rolled over to face him and put her hands on his chest, only to notice he was once again wrapped in the same borrowed robe he'd worn that first night after Omega.

"Clothes?" she asked, despising the tremor in her voice. Why had he felt the need to conceal himself?

Garrus gave her a goofy smile. "No chafing."

Of course. She hadn't even thought that the two of them probably shouldn't be cuddling up in the nude for too long. He hadn't taken off on her; he'd been protecting her. Watching her back. Good old Garrus.

"No chafing," she agreed with a smile. She accepted him into the bed, wrapping her upper arm around him. She nuzzled his cheek and listened to him growling in the back of his throat as he slid his hand onto her waist. "Do I need to wear clothes too?"

"Not until we're done with this," he said, pulling a cloth and a small tube out of his robe pocket.

"What's that?"

His mandibles twitched. "Mordin said this lotion would help with, ah..."

"Me being allergic to you." Curious, Shepard let him go and sat up in bed, looking down at herself. Sure enough, she had a red rash developing...

Shepard started to blush as she realized where the rash was...over her belly and abdomen and down the insides of her legs, particularly her knees, where she'd been gripping Garrus' waist, and her inner thighs. It wasn't painful or itchy, though it did feel tender to the touch, and Shepard wondered if she would break out in oozing boils, or worse, if she didn't accept the medicated lotion. Come to think of it, the worst was …

It took her a moment to realize the redness there was more than a rash. Shit, she was going to leave a mess. Shepard released him, looking around for some tissue or something, but when she looked to Garrus for some assistance, she realized that he was already staring at her with a horrified expression on his face.

"Did I hurt you?" His voice came out as a strangled whisper.

"I'm fine," she assured him, though she didn't feel _fine_, exactly. She felt shaky and needy and sick.

"I smell…blood," he choked.

_Oh_. "Don't worry about that, Garrus, it's…"

"I _did_," he insisted. "I _did _hurt you." He cringed away from her, as though withdrawing before she could attack him.

He looked about as wretched as she felt, and she found herself immediately, instinctively, defending him, even though the only enemy here was his own innocence. "Garrus, that happens to humans. You didn't do anything wrong." She grabbed for his free hand with her own; once she captured it, she smiled up at him, hoping she looked encouraging.

Garrus regarded her skeptically. "Humans bleed when they have sex?"

Shepard blushed. "Not every time. Just the first time."

"The first…?" Garrus' jaw dropped as the implication sank in.

Shepard used her other hand to guide his mandibles gently back up into position. "Cerberus rebuilt me, remember? New body? What, you think I jumped the first guy I saw after they let me out of the lab?" Shit, she was joking again, even though the maelstrom of emotion tearing through her was a very serious concern.

Garrus cleared his throat and handed her the cloth. "Er, do you need to…tidy…"

She blushed furiously. His mandibles clattered. Suddenly they were laughing again. She picked up the cloth; he'd used hot water to moisten it, and it was pleasantly warm. Shepard got on her knees, touched it to herself, blurted out, "Don't _watch_!" and, though she was still hot in the cheeks, giggled as she saw him dutifully plant a pillow over his head.

"Ever feel like you're thirteen years old again?" he mumbled through the pillow.

"My God, Garrus, you were doing this when you were _thirteen_?"

"Badly and with much fumbling, yes. And considering I was in boot camp at fifteen, that's not _that _bad." He peeked out from under the pillow.

She'd forgotten turians were legal adults at fifteen. She didn't see him as an alien; she just thought of him as a person, and sometimes she forgot that _person_ and _human_ weren't the same thing. For a quick moment she wondered if someday that would come back to bite her in the ass. "There, I'm clean. You can do the lotion thing now."

He slipped up behind her on the bed. She had only a quick glimpse of sleek muscles, silver scales, the deadly grace of an apex predator before his hands closed over her shoulders. The lotion's sweet scent couldn't hide its antiseptic undertones, and it stung her raw skin. "Why?" Garrus murmured in her ear as his hands slid down her chest, spreading lotion from collar bone to belly. "How old were you?"

Shepard flushed. She didn't want to admit this to him. Anything that took her back in time was dangerous; right now she needed every year she could get to separate her from that little girl in the cold apartment—the girl who would throw her arms around Vakarian's neck and beg him to never leave her, _please_, she'd do anything. She'd be a better girl. Promise.

Shepard didn't want to go there, because as she'd gotten older she'd learned that most children were loved just for being who they were—and that not even saving the galaxy from Saren and Sovereign, or saving humanity from the Collectors, or defeating the fucking Reapers, would have been enough to change her mother's mind.

Garrus made a low sound deep in his throat, a sad keening noise.

_He thinks you don't trust him._

_Man up, Shepard._

"Twenty-one," she spit out. There. Let him think what he would.

"Your boot camp was…"

"Eighteen."

"So you were already a soldier the, er, the last time this happened."

Did he seriously think she hadn't been with anyone after that first time? "Hey now, I had more than one boyfriend, I'll have you know. I had someone I broke up with right before I started my Spectre qualifications."

"I meant the last_ first_ time you had sex," the turian replied smugly.

Shepard winced. "I really don't want to talk about that."

Garrus tightened his arms across her chest. She was shocked by the low, rippling snarl she heard right behind her ear.

"I have a sniper rifle," he growled. "Give me a name."

She wriggled from his grasp. "No, you've got it wrong. He didn't…it was a consensual relationship. No need to go all avenging angel for me."

Garrus faced her, his eyes flashing blue fire. "_Something _happened or you wouldn't be so reluctant to talk about it."

_Yep, here's the problem with screwing someone who knows me too well._

Shepard pulled his blanket over her body before continuing. "We wanted different things. I did something stupid. First relationship, bad judgment."

He waited, letting her talk.

Shepard let out an exasperated breath. "I got too attached, he split, everything came crashing down." She tugged the comforter tighter around her. "I said I wouldn't have sex without love. He said he loved me, I believed him, and I shouldn't have." She blinked, willing herself not to cry. "I don't know if he just said it to get me into bed, or if he meant it and it just didn't last. I don't know. I don't know…what's wrong…with me…"

Shepard squeezed her hands into fists, letting her nails sink into her skin until the pain cleared her thoughts.

"Oh." Garrus folded his arms around her again, not seeming to mind that the blanket was in the way. "So now it's just with people you trust."

Shepard snorted. "No, so after that it was with people I didn't mind losing."

Garrus was suddenly very, very still.

"Until you," she admitted, wriggling in his arms to lay her head on his shoulder. "I...maybe I did want to know what it would be like with someone I could trust."

"And?" He licked her cheek.

"I don't know," Shepard said quietly. Her voice sounded very small. "I guess it depends on what happens next."

"What do you want to happen next?" he asked.

Shepard made a frustrated sound, but inside, her stomach was tying itself into knots. She didn't know how to answer that question. Part of her wanted everything to stay just the way it was—her best friend with a little fun on the side—but she also knew that if he pretended nothing had changed, she'd be upset, and more than a little hurt. Part of her wanted him to, hell, _date_ her or something, and wouldn't that be selfish, crushing his chances of ever having a normal turian family? She loved him too much to screw him over like that. And part of her kept insisting that it didn't matter what she wanted—sooner or later Garrus Vakarian would join her first lover in bolting for the door, or she'd do what she'd done with every man since then and walk out before she could get attached.

_Stupid, Shepard. You're already attached._

"I don't know," she repeated, and hated how indecisive she sounded.

"Well…maybe we could think about this, then. How was this? Night to remember, or awkward interspecies thing?" She noticed he didn't use the adjective _horrible_.

She felt suddenly relieved by the change in topic, even though a nagging part of her insisted that she was only putting off the inevitable. Shepard shoved that voice into silence and turned her attention instead to the warmth of Garrus' wiry muscles through the blanket and his increasingly appealing scent of copper and grass. "Um, I'd say ninety percent night to remember and ten percent awkward interspecies thing." She turned to watch his shocked expression, and then she grinned wickedly. "Though we might be able to improve those numbers with practice."

His left mandible quivered. "Oh, you want to _practice_, is that it?" Garrus nuzzled her enthusiastically. "I could get behind that."

Shepard wrapped her arms around his shoulders, letting the blanket fall away. "Or you could get _beneath_ that, Officer Vakarian."

He grinned up at her. "Whatever you say, Commander."

Shepard frowned. "Er…it'll have to be some other time, though." She buried her face in his neck to hide her flaming cheeks. "I'm still sore," she admitted. "Too sore to play any more tonight."

"Let me finish up with that lotion then," he murmured.

She settled herself atop him, the blanket covering his legs to the hips, her back against his bare chest, as he continued what he'd started. Shepard closed her eyes, enjoying the sweet, soothing sensation of the lotion on her raw skin. _I could get used to this_. It was kind of nice, having a guy who was still interested in being affectionate _after_ getting what he wanted. Shepard let out a deep breath. Her eyelids fluttered, and she realized the adrenaline high of the Collector base fight was finally starting to wear off. She could really use a nap…

…so why were Garrus' gentle ministrations starting to turn her on?

He must have intuited her reaction from her swaying hips, heavy breathing, or heated body, because he bowed his head and began to lap her neck. She moaned, writhed. Her vision blurred in and out of focus. She wanted to close her eyes and surrender to the sensations of his hands on her skin. And Shepard—who'd found it surprisingly easy to resist Morinth's seduction—truly feared she lacked the strength to protest Vakarian's.

_Oh, God, what's happening to me?_

"Garrus," she said, and her voice came out sounding like a sleepy complaint instead of a strong, decisive order. "I said I couldn't screw any more tonight." She used the vulgarity on purpose, in the hopes of driving him off.

"I know," he murmured, undeterred. "It's a good thing I know other ways to make you happy."

_Just like before the Omega-Four relay_. Except he knew what to do now. He didn't need her awake and alert and teaching him.

He caressed her, very lightly, an unspoken inquiry, and she realized she had a choice—get the hell out of his bed and out of his cabin and out of his life right now, or gamble with her heart as she had just gambled with her life, and trust that once again, Garrus would be there to catch her.

_I'll be here if you need me._

She knew better than to trust a man's promise…

_He's not a man, he's a turian_, she thought, and smug with her ability to twist her own logic, she gave him her blessing.

"Yes, please."

#

When Garrus woke up, the clock said that it was midafternoon Zulu time. Shepard was still sound asleep, her head on his chest, her hair strewn messily over his plates, and a great big smile on her face. Her sports bra, meanwhile, was hanging off his light fixture, dangling above their heads. He hadn't realized he'd thrown it _that _hard.

Garrus tucked his arm around Shepard, closed his eyes and sighed happily, feeling pretty damned content himself right about now.

He still had that nagging feeling that he was dead. Maybe in the Collector base. Maybe on Omega.

_You think too much_, Shepard had chided him.

So he stopped thinking, and just savoured how it felt to lie here with Shepard warm against him, with that scent of a summer breeze in his nostrils and the occasional precious whisper of her skin against his.

#

Shepard came aware slowly in a lazy fog of pleasure and happiness. Her body felt tired, but _good_ tired, the kind that came after winning a long-distance run or coming out of a battle victorious, and the pleasure outweighed a few nagging aches. The blanket was soft against her bare skin—damn, she didn't usually sleep naked. Attacks, onboard emergencies, even fire drills…in any of those circumstances, it was a waste of precious time to search for clothing. Why had she…

She rolled over and saw Garrus lying beside her, his eyes half-closed, growling softly to himself.

_Oh, God._

_ Now _she remembered.

The problem wasn't the sex. She'd come to terms with the fact that she found an alien attractive and she wanted to sleep with him. It wasn't the romance. She had found she rather liked being physically affectionate with her best friend. No, the problem was her increasing lack of control.

She was forgetting obvious, simple, practical things, like using the lotion after their intimacy, or remembering to get dressed before falling asleep. She'd let him pleasure her with his touch, over and over again, until she'd shouted, and cried, and begged for more, and God knows what else, splayed out all over him like a cheap asari hooker. Then she'd passed out, unconscious and utterly vulnerable. What stupid shit would she do next?

"Shepard?" His voice reverberated in her ear, and damn it, even as upset as she was, his reverberating tones still turned her on. "You're tense. Is everything all right?"

"I acted like a whore." She sat up and tugged the blanket around her to hide her nakedness, still feeling sickeningly exposed without her clothing.

"Shepard?"

"Right before I fell asleep. Shit. I don't want to know what you think of me."

"Shepard, my respect for you has not changed. I don't understand. What's so wrong about being happy?"

"I…" She scowled, choked, unable to describe what she'd done.

"You asked. I gave." He sat up as well. Garrus nuzzled her neck and whispered softly in her ear as he folded his arms around her. "It was an honour."

Shepard snorted, not sure whether she was crying or mocking, or both at once. "An honour? What the hell is that supposed to mean?" It sounded like some kind of fucking _duty_. How could they be equals in this relationship when Garrus, ever the good turian, insisted on turning her every word into an order to be obeyed?

He released her. Silence stretched between them until she felt uncomfortable being so close to him. Awkwardly, she shifted sideways and immediately felt the sudden ache of his absence.

She hazarded a glance at him. He half-rolled onto his side and propped himself up with his elbow, but he stared at the pillow instead of at her when he mumbled, "It means it was special." She saw the muscles in his neck flex when he swallowed and added, "To me, at least."

"Oh, shit, I'm being an ass." She reached one arm across him and used the other to lift his jaw so he would look at her. "I'm not good at vulnerability," she whispered, hoping he would understand.

He nuzzled her. "But that's why you're with someone you can trust."

She wanted to believe that, but _trust_ and _permanence_ weren't the same thing. Even if he would stay with her forever if she asked him to, it wasn't a fair request. He'd been a normal turian with a normal life until she'd plowed into it, dragging him along on her crazy chase after Saren, dropping him into the middle of Collectors and Reapers and Cerberus and God knew what-all else, turning the clean-cut cop into a rogue vigilante. Somewhere along the line there had to be a limit to the damage she was doing. Somewhere she had to let him go back to the life he'd had before she'd interfered.

She kissed him instead of answering, and he must have misinterpreted it as a reply of sorts, because for the next few moments they cuddled in silence. He was warm, and smelled good, and God, she was going to miss him when the time came…

There was a sudden buzzing noise. Garrus looked up. "It's my comm. Want me to ignore it?"

She kind of _did_, but she'd been self-indulgent far too long. "No, go ahead."

Garrus answered it and she listened in. It was Miranda; apparently the whole crew was gathering in Kasumi's room for a victory party now that everyone was well-rested and on the mend from their ordeal. Garrus had told her he'd be along shortly, and no, sorry, he didn't know where Commander Shepard was—he'd been busy calibrating the Thanix cannon.

When he had disconnected, Shepard glanced at him. He cleared his throat and took her hands in his.

"If you want to tell the crew that we're, ah, _involved_, I don't mind, but I don't want to be the one to say anything before you're ready."

He was sweet, but _involved_ was a very vague term that could mean anything from _friends with benefits _to _will you come to the wedding_? Shepard took a deep breath, trying to focus on the bright side: _involved_ meant this was not a one-night stand they'd just had.

"Are you all right?" Garrus looked down at himself. "Because I don't want to go down there like this, and, well…" He grinned. "Not that I don't like the current view, but I don't want to share it with the rest of the crew."

Shepard blushed, though she was secretly pleased. "I'm going to go up to my quarters for a shower, then. I'll tell everyone it was a long one if they want to know why I was out of touch."

Garrus nodded. "I'll wash up and go hide out in the main battery for a while. Give some credibility to the calibration story."

She snorted. "Does that thing really need constant maintenance or are you doing something else in there? Like calibrating your _personal _cannon?"

He drew the robe shut in mock indignation. "As you can tell, my personal cannon is operating at peak efficiency."

It felt good to laugh with him. Shepard hoped she could stop thinking about the insecurities of her previous lifetime, or a future which, if the Reapers had their way, might never come. In this moment…in this single shining point in time…she was happy, happier than she had been in longer than she could remember.

Garrus deliberately waited for a good hour before he opened the doors to the main battery, giving Shepard plenty of time to mingle with the crew before he joined in. While he would have loved to walk into the gathering arm-in-arm with Commander Shepard, he could tell that she was more than a little unnerved by the intensity of their relationship. Garrus wasn't exactly sure how love and lust worked in humans—he really needed to do more research, this time on the psychological aspects of having a human partner—but it seemed as though Shepard was going through a stage he'd already come to terms with.

He could only pray she came to the same conclusion.

Garrus didn't want to dwell on that thought. He had busied himself for a while checking the Thanix cannon, but all his hours of calibration had paid off: the targeting computer was running flawlessly, even after the encounter with the Collectors. All it would need now was routine upgrades and system checks…not that he was in any hurry to tell the rest of the crew. He rather liked having _calibrations_ as an excuse to get some time to himself.

The party was in full swing when he stepped through the battery doors. Most of the Normandy's third deck had been taken over for the festivities, which made sense as it housed the mess, the crew washrooms, and the crew quarters. Garrus winced when he saw that the crowd was starting to fill the hallway leading down to the main battery; so much for his private refuge.

The bulk of the party seemed to be congregating in Kasumi's room, due no doubt to the presence of a bar. Garrus had long since stopped thinking of alcohol as something to consume for fun; he'd had too many brutal nights on Omega fighting the temptation to take cover inside a bottle to enjoy social drinks any longer. He'd lost the ability to consume in moderation.

His eyes slid across the room, searching for Shepard.

_Moderation._ It seemed to be a foreign concept for him these days.

There she was, and how the hell could she make the regular Cerberus battle uniform look so damn sexy? He grinned, noticing she'd torn the Cerberus patches off the shoulders. Unfortunately, he couldn't spend the entire evening hanging off of Shepard.

Instead, he began making his way to the corner where Mordin, Dr Chakwas and Samara were sitting at a table off to the side, sipping sedately at various beverages and nibbling finger foods. He was on his way over to say hello when someone poked him in the shoulder.

"Hey, boy scout," came Jack's rough voice. "Took you long enough to come out and party."

Garrus forced a smile at the ex-convict. "Just because the suicide mission is over doesn't mean we should be flying around with inaccurate weapons. The Thanix cannon took a few blows during the mission and wasn't firing straight."

"Uh-huh. You better hope you're _firing straight_ after you explain to your girlfriend."

Garrus choked.

"Yeah. She's been sitting all alone waiting for you. Fuckin' jerk."

Garrus' eyes shot over to Shepard. She actually appeared to be quite happily engaged in a conversation with Legion, attempting to explain the concept of a party to the ever-curious geth, so he wasn't worried about coming to physical harm for upsetting her. But how...

Jack called out to Miranda. "Hey, cheerleader. You owe me a hundred credits."

Miranda walked over, shaking her head regretfully, but she reached into her pocket and typed on her datapad. Garrus heard the ping of a credit transfer. "I'd figured out that all the "calibrations" were a decoy," Miranda said slowly, "but I don't understand it. The whole time we were on Haestrom, she only had eyes for Kal'Reegar."

Just when Garrus thought he couldn't be any more shocked, he had to find out that Shepard had been checking out a _quarian_?

"How...how did..." Garrus spluttered.

Jack folded her arms. "Oh, come on now. Right before we went through the Omega-Four relay, there were only two people who were nowhere to be found." Her eyes slid over to Miranda. "Actually, four, but..."

"We aren't discussing that," Miranda retorted, arms folded, but Garrus remembered Jacob's mad dash to the elevator and knew exactly what they meant. "We're discussing Officer Vakarian and his adorable little calibration session with our very own Miss vas Normandy." She smiled at Garrus as she wrapped her arm around his shoulders and forcefully steered him across the room. "Next time, do the girl a favour and don't bother to pretend that all the two of you are doing in there is fixing the guns. Take her somewhere with a comfortable bed at least."

And, with a shove, a flustered Garrus found himself practically shoved up against Tali, who was seated alone in the corner tapping furiously at her datapad.

"Do you mind?" Tali said. "I'm trying to write a message to..."

And suddenly, with a devilish grin, Garrus knew exactly what to do.

He seized the datapad and took a look. Yes, his suspicions were correct. "Kal'Reeeeeeegar," he said in a sing-song voice. "Is he your booooyfriend?"

"Give me that!" Tali snapped, but Garrus tossed it to Jack instead.

Jack caught it. Gaped at it.

"Give me my money back," Miranda demanded. "And the hundred credits you owe me."

"What, you think I have any money?" Jack demanded.

"Wait," Tali said slowly as she took in the scene. "What were you two betting on?"

Jack stared at Tali. "You mean that whole time before the jump through the Omega-Four relay, you were..."

"Writing letters," Tali said firmly, but her voice quivered as she added, "Who I was writing to is none of your..."

"Kal'Reegar," Miranda and Garrus said together, and Garrus had no doubt the quarian was blushing under her mask.

Jack's face was the picture of confusion. "But if you were alone, then where was _he_?" she demanded, pointing at Garrus.

Tali responded, her tone making it perfectly clear that her nose was wrinkled up underneath her mask. "You thought I was fooling around with…."  
Garrus had to deny the claim, but he didn't want to hurt Tali's feelings, either. He folded his arms and said, "Tali is a lovely girl and a good friend and it would be like making out with one of my sisters."

The quarian gave him a glance that, even through her helmet, was clearly a look of relief. Garrus felt glad that he'd defused the situation in a way that clarified their relationship without making her feel as though no one would want her. If Kal'Reegar had any brains in his head, he'd know that he was a lucky man for having the interest of a girl like Tali.

But not as lucky as Garrus.

#

It was a long time before the party began to wind down. As Shepard finished off her last drink and set the empty glass on Kasumi's bar, she wondered where the thief would be sleeping tonight. Certainly not in here, judging by the large, comatose krogan sprawled all over her couch.

Poor Grunt. Tank imprinting did nothing to build up an alcohol tolerance. Fortunately, he'd ended up being a happy drunk—Shepard didn't know what she would have done if the booze had made him aggressive, or rather, even more aggressive than normal. Instead, it seemed to have the opposite effect. Grunt had spent a few hours on the couch giggling at nothing in particular, then curled up and fallen fast asleep.

Shepard had the suspicion that some of the crew would be up for hours yet, celebrating their continued survival. Others had already made their excuses and headed off to bed, still suffering exhaustion after their ordeal at the hands of the Collectors. And she'd noticed quite a few sneaking off in pairs, including Jacob and Miranda, who weren't nearly as subtle as they thought they were.

Shepard frowned, thinking of someone else who was every bit as subtle as he thought he was tonight.

Garrus had come by for a friendly chat and some good natured teasing and that was _it_. He had spent most of the evening annoying Tali, much to the amusement of Jack and Kasumi. Now Tali and Kasumi were engrossed in a girls-only conversation which, from what Shepard had overheard, centered around that nice Kal'Reegar fellow. Jack, meanwhile, had declared the discussion "nauseating" and loudly announced her intent to leave before the subject matter gave her diabetic shock. But just before Jack could attempt to chug an entire bottle of tequila herself, Thane had neatly plucked it from her hand and replaced it with a glass of water. Shepard wasn't exactly sure why this situation hadn't lead to a bloody fight, but now Jack and Thane were speaking, the drell more animated than Shepard had ever seen him, and Jack only occasionally insulting his parentage, his virility, and his intelligence.

Trusting that Krios knew what he was doing, Shepard looked about the room. Garrus had bypassed the bar in favour of water; he was in the process of holding his glass under the cooler's spigot.

Their eyes met across the room.

Slowly, Garrus put his glass down on a nearby table and inclined his head towards the door, accompanied with an Alliance hand signal indicating a withdrawal.

Shepard hid her smile as she signalled compliance. She'd taught him the signals on the last Normandy, but she'd never imagined then that she'd someday use them like this.

Garrus flared his mandibles in acknowledgement and began moving swiftly, around the room and out the door. Shepard, meanwhile, circled the group, saying her goodnights to everyone still remaining, before exiting herself.

She'd expected to see Garrus waiting in the elevator, but it was empty. Curious, she began circling through the halls, weaving her way through the crowd remaining in the mess. She was on the verge of looking for a volunteer to check the men's room when something at the back of the ship caught her eye.

There was a paper sign taped to the door of the main battery.

Shepard, acting on a hunch, moved down the corridor leading to the gun room. A few paces away, she stopped to read the sign:

DO NOT DISTURB

CALIBRATIONS IN PROGRESS

Shepard's lips curved in an admiring smile. She looked back over her shoulder. No one was looking this way. Grinning, she rapped twice on the battery door.

Obligingly, it opened.

Shepard slipped through the portal and into Garrus' arms.

~finis~

Author's Note: While this marks the end of "Where Angels Fear To Tread," please check out "Closer to Home," the sequel which picks up where this leaves off.

I started a separate story for thematic reasons. This is a tale of friends becoming lovers. "Closer to Home" is the story of lovers becoming family.


End file.
